


Long Night In Hell

by Featherbelle, immortalkaos80



Category: Almost Human, Doom (2005)
Genre: Almost Human/Doom Crossover, Angst, Crossover, Eventual Romance, F/M, Gen, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-16
Updated: 2015-01-19
Packaged: 2018-03-07 19:52:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 22,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3181094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Featherbelle/pseuds/Featherbelle, https://archiveofourown.org/users/immortalkaos80/pseuds/immortalkaos80
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John 'Reaper' Grimm is now head of RRTS 6. The team gets a distress signal from one of their own. They get more than they bargained for when they set out on a rescue mission.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue Part One

**Author's Note:**

  * For [immortalkaos80](https://archiveofourown.org/users/immortalkaos80/gifts).



> Please note this is a work of fiction. Do not complain to me about inaccuracies and inconsistencies with the military aspect of things. This story is set nearly 40 years into the future, and as such, it should be believable that changes can occur, although I have done my best to research what I can as far as modern day information will allow. This story was begun as a gift for my best friend, who was having a bad day. I hope others in the Doom and Karl Urban fandoms will enjoy this work, but ultimately, this is for Rainey. Love ya Sis! 
> 
> Prologue written by immortalkaos80 :)
> 
> See end of work for reference notes.

**DOOM: LONG NIGHT IN HELL**

 

** **

 

**Prologue**

**_Milledgeville, Georgia_**

**_2051_ **

Kira sat across the kitchen table from her mother, Maureen, and listened to her lamentations over dinner while absently rubbing at the back of her head. She had a throbbing headache already and her mother was not helping it.

“What am I going to do?” her mother said despondently.  She peered at Kira with a pitiful expression and Kira wanted to scream at her. But it wouldn’t do any good. It never did.

_What are **you** going to do?_

Kira put down her fork, leaving her spaghetti only half eaten, and sighed. “Mom, you’ll be fine. The house will be paid for in full. It’s already in your name; I’m just the one paying the mortgage.”

She had found this house via a foreclosure auction ten years ago. Not for herself. For her mother.  Maureen wasn’t young anymore. She was sixty-seven and needed a place that wasn’t going to fall out from under her if she put a foot wrong.

Kira had no interest in owning any kind of property in this God-Forsaken place. She’d never even intended to come back to it and hadn’t for the last ten years. But she’d made sure her mother wasn’t stuck living in the same conditions that Kira had grown up in. A trashy trailer that had been falling apart at the seams and with barely enough room to breathe in.

The house wasn’t large and it wasn’t terribly small. It was set back from Highway 23 on half an acre of land that butted up against a quarter mile of forest on the backside of the house beyond which lay one of the dozens of abandoned kaolin mines that dotted the county. If you pushed through the trees and looked out the other side, you could be forgiven for mistaking the landscape for a barren desert but the location had meant the value of the house had been lower.

That had been the most important thing. It wasn’t easy to afford the mortgage on a 240k house—even with the location, real estate wasn’t cheap--and pay rent on an apartment back home on 48k a year even if you shared that expense with your best friend and roommate, not that either of them saw much of their apartment.  The marines of the United States Marine Corps Rapid Response Tactical Squad 6 saw little enough of their own barracks let alone their homes.

It was that tendency to spend most of their time deployed on some crisis mission in, usually, the most dangerous circumstances imaginable that had let Kira come back to the hell that was her hometown, Milledgeville, Georgia, in the first place. She had a solid month of leave she hadn’t taken yet and when she’d gone to her Squad Leader, Gunnery Sergeant John Grimm, better known as Reaper to request it, he’d given it without a second glance never questioning the reason. Personal reasons was good enough for him. Though he’d looked at her sideways when she’d asked initially, since Kira never took leave unless she was run—or dragged--out of the barracks by him or Ashlyn, better known as Irish, her best friend since childhood and fellow team mate.

Three weeks into that leave and Kira was beginning to think she’d made a huge mistake by coming back here—again. She didn’t know why she’d thought it would be different. It never was, it never would be. Maybe she’d thought now things might…but it didn’t matter.  She didn’t know why she bothered.

 “I don’t mean that,” her mother said plaintively. “Who is going to take care of me?”

Kira shut her eyes and let out another sigh. “Mom. You will have everything you need. You can hire someone to take care of the house… You’ll have the money…”

“Yeah, until I’m too old and feeble and the county sticks me in a nursing home for whatever time I have left,” her mother shot bitterly. “You are supposed to take care of your Mother. To keep me out of one of those places. It’s your responsibility as my daughter. I’ve earned that much from you.”

Kira sat there staring at her mother in blank shock. Did she even realize the content of what she’d said? What time _she_ had left. Unbelievable.  She shook her head and scoffed, pushing away from the table and causing the quaint ladder back chair she was sitting in to squeal loudly as it ground against the floor tiles.

“I’m not doing this. I’m not,” she said and got up.

“Oh that’s right. Run away Kira,” her mother spat venomously. “It’s what you’re good at. It’s all you ever do. You ran away from your family and your responsibilities. You ran away from your home. And now—after ten years without a visit—you turn up, tell me this and run away again. You don’t even have the decency to give me what I deserve in the time left.”

Kira didn’t respond despite the biting sting her mother’s words left. Instead, she stalked from the kitchen without a backward glance. Kira had come back on leave at first, in the beginning five years of her fifteen-year tenure with the USMC. She’d tried. But it always turned out the same, with her fighting a war that took more out of her than anything she’d ever seen on a real battlefield. And always losing. Finally, she’d stopped visiting and tried her best to forget. But she’d always called, weekly. But it wasn’t enough. It never was.

“You’re just like your father!”

Kira stopped dead a pace from the archway that led into the hall. There weren’t many words in this world that could hurt as much as those five and her mother knew it. She looked back over her shoulder at her mother who looked like she was bordering on unbridled fury—Kira should probably anticipate flung dishes any second—and despondent sobbing.

“I’m _nothing_ like my father. He’s a selfish, psychotic, drunk bastard.”

Her mother nodded. “Yeah. He is. And so are you. You ungrateful, selfish brat. All you ever think about is yourself. You just left me here. You couldn’t stay and do what I asked. Become a nurse or a medical transcriptionist. No, you had to leave and join the God Damn Marines with Ashlyn. You always do what your friends tell you. You have no mind of your own. You never have. And you couldn’t just join the Marines you had to join the Special Forces.  You didn’t want a nice normal, productive life near your Mother—who has no one. You would rather spend your life killing people!”  Her mother was so red faced she could compete with a tomato for deepest shade.  “At least your father didn’t _leave_.”

“No,” Kira agreed through clenched teeth. “He didn’t leave. Instead, he planned to kill us.” 

Her mother glared, furious, picking up her plate, still half-full of spaghetti Kira had cooked--a fact that would have resulted in never ending teasing from the RRTS team if they knew she could cook--and hurled it toward Kira’s head.

Kira neatly ducked out the way of the careening mass of china, noodles and sauce. It hit the wall beside the threshold and shattered. Then she walked out and ignored her mother’s ranting wails of bereavement that now no one would be left to care about her and she’d be all alone. That she’d lost not one but two daughters because Kira might as well be dead like her sister for all that she was around. That her mother had suffered all kinds of horrors and medical problems that ruined her health—that put her in constant pain--but she hadn’t run away. She’d stayed in the hell of her marriage to Kira’s father and endured it…for Kira. And that Kira didn’t know what suffering was.

The ranting went on for at least thirty minutes, during which Kira tried fervently to ignore the passive aggressively hurled slights she’d heard a thousand times in the last thirty odd years and failed. Just like always. Admitting despairingly to herself that maybe her mother was right and she was just like her father. Maybe worse. She killed people for a living. He’d planned to but never gotten the chance.

Back at RRTS Headquarters, whether on a mission or downtime, with the team, Kira was Kaos. The bold, gregarious, mischievous, quick witted, and unflappable. All a neat shield of lies that hid Kira, the insecure, never good enough, too afraid to love or get close to anyone because this was all she knew of it, dead beat, irresponsible, selfish, heartless and crazy daughter of Maureen and Bryson Canady.

The only person who had an inkling of that Kira was Ash, who’d been around to see a lot of it. But even she didn’t know it all. Kira had never and would never tell her. She couldn’t. Just like Kira would never tell her about her ‘personal reasons’ for this leave. She’d lied to her best friend, telling her it was just her over bearing, controlling Mother finally wearing down Kira’s resolve so she would visit. Kira felt guilty for it but it had to be done.

It wasn’t the first time Kira had lied to Ash. She’d learned to lie with aplomb growing up. She’d had to.  To tell meant worse would happen when anyone found out. And things had been bad enough as it was.

Ash wasn’t like Kira. She was soft-hearted under all that toughness. She did care about people and she had a streak of lightness in her Kira had lost a long time ago. It was probably wanting to protect that little glimmer of innocence in that temperamental fireball in a world that would stomp it into nothing given the chance that had made Kira befriend Ash in the first place when they’d been little kids. She had wanted to protect someone from the reality of the world, so maybe somebody would be able to hold on to what she’d lost and never have to know the world could be like that.

Of course, a lot of that had proved fruitless. Ash wasn’t the innocent child she had been. God knew they’d seen things that would turn the toughest badass’s hair white and lived to tell about it. But Ash still had that spark. She managed to hold onto it and Kira was not going to be the one who made it go out.  So she lied and she’d keep lying for as long as it took.

It wasn’t until her mother came looking for her since Kira hadn’t returned to be yelled at in person, that Kira realized she’d planted herself on the couch in the living room and had spread out her gear on the coffee table, cleaning it methodically out of pure habit. That she shared with her mother. When Kira got angry or upset, she cleaned. It was just that now she cleaned her weapons instead of attacking the dishes or the laundry.

In fact, it was how the team back in Twentynine Palms always knew she was pissed off about something. To put it in the words of Kennex, ‘It looks like Snow White blew through here’. Leading him to suggest jokingly to Reaper that they change her handle to reflect it. Kira had warmly suggested if she was Snow White that made him Dopey. He’d promptly taken back the suggestion.

Staff Sergeant John Kennex. God there was trouble. Reaper’s slightly older look-a-like cousin and the only other person that Kira had ever considered letting in except Ash. He was heroic, irascible, dry humored, with a quiet warmth and humanity to him he didn’t flaunt but never hid and a hard-nosed whatever it takes personality that refused to let the bad guys win. And she’d fallen for him. Hard. It hadn’t come fast and it hadn’t hit her like a freight train. Which was probably how come by the time she’d realized he’d crept under her skin it had been too late to shake him. But he’d never know. No, Kira didn’t dare risk that. Especially now.

Besides, they worked together. It would be a bad idea to put two romantic relationships into play on the same team. Irish and Reaper were already madly—secretly—in love and she wouldn’t risk having them separated. They were too happy together. And Kira wanted that for them.  Or that’s the excuse she gave herself. And it worked, because it was true, every word. 

Except it wasn’t the only reason and Kira knew it. But if she admitted she loved Kennex…then what? It could never go anywhere and someone else would get hurt and it wasn’t like Kira even knew how to love someone. She’d spend all her time wondering when the next shoe was going to drop, when the ‘It was nice but it’s over’ was going to come or the much more likely ‘It’s just not enough.’ Kira couldn’t bring herself to take the chance because she knew who she was and how it would end. She couldn’t love someone like they were meant to be, like Ash did. She didn’t know how.  And a guy like Kennex couldn’t possibly love a girl like her anyway.

Kira shooed one of the five cats that roamed the house off the coffee table and away from the disassembled weaponry, the orange face of the RRTS 6 assigned watch on her left wrist flashing with a flicker of waning sunlight creeping through the curtains. The cat gave a vexed meow and twitched its tail as it stalked away from the insolent human who had dared to disturb its perch.

Her mother had a tendency to collect stray animals the way other people collect baseball cards, doting on them like prized children, sympathizing with the poor abandoned creature’s plight and saving them. It was ironic. Her mother empathized more with the stray cats she collected than she did her own daughter.

Which was why the coffee table full of gun pieces was probably going to go over like a fart in church in about two seconds considering what her Mother had said half an hour ago.

Sure enough, it did.  Damn Reaper for all those blind folded drills until they could strip, clean and reassemble their weapons even if they were half in a coma. Kira hadn’t even realized what she was doing.

“Oh my God,” her mother said shaking her head in disgust. “Look at you.” She eyed the weapons with revulsion and picked up the cat Kira had shooed as though she’d kicked it across the room not gently coaxed it to get down. Not that her mother didn’t own a gun of her own. This was the South. Not owning a gun was tantamount to heresy. 

But her mother’s little .22 snub nose was meant to ward off aggressive strays and burglars. The .45 USP, the knife, the M40A5 rifle and the UMP submachine gun disassembled on the table were meant for exactly what they looked like they were. Killing things with prejudice.  Her modified G36K assault rifle was back at headquarters, neatly tucked away on the chopper along with the other larger pieces of weaponry favored by her teammates.

Her mother was right. Kira was a killer. And she was good at it. It was the only thing she’d ever been good at. And, guiltily, she wasn’t sorry she was good at it. She _liked_ her chosen profession even took pride in it. She didn’t kill innocent people. She killed the bad ones. But… she was still a killer.

Hell, maybe she deserved what she had coming to her.  Not that it mattered either way anymore.

“You don’t even look like a woman anymore,” her mother accused.

Her mother’s eyes traveled from the guns to the back of Kira’s neck, gaze flicking disgustedly over the tattoo--clearly visible beneath the swinging tassel of Kira’s blonde ponytail and above the back of her tank top’s collar--nestled where neck met back and shoulders.  It was a set of three over lapping inverted half crescents--a symbol that represented chaos, in honor of her handle, Kaos.  She had gotten it with Ash when they’d earned their handles from Reaper, while Ash had hers added to her already existing black rose tattoo. Which she’d also gotten with Kira when Kira had gotten her first tattoo, a triquetra—representing unity and balance--at the small of her back just above her tailbone bracketed by two bits of ornamental filigree. It stretched the breadth of her lower back. It amused Kira darkly, chaos and balance and never the twain shall meet.

Her mother hated them both and understood neither of them.  Marked reminders that her child had not turned out to be the perfect daughter she’d wanted her to be, etched into her skin until the day she died, marring the ‘perfect’ beauty of the demure Southern Belle Kira had never been.

A sharp pang shot up her neck over the back of her skull and Kira rubbed at it trying to make it go away uselessly and ignored her glaring mother.

“I know exactly how _that_ feels,” her mother said bitterly.

Instead of arguing that her mother had no idea in fucking hell what _that_ felt like Kira simply scoffed and shook her head.  There was no point anyway, her mother would simply plow over anything she said and keep going. Nothing Kira ever said or did mattered.

Maureen’s pretty face, her short shorn blonde hair showing only a little gray at the temples and her blue eyes faded to gray from their once brilliant blue, she was sixty-seven but she still looked like she was in her late fifties, contorted into a horrid mask of sheer disdain.

“You laugh,” she said threateningly. Then her expression turned coldly gleefully vicious. How could a woman with a face that looked so damned harmless even sweet look like such a brutal monster when she wanted to? She gestured to the tattoo she could see and gave a humorless laugh. “I bet that is what caused it. You had to go and poison yourself.”

That figured. Blame anything but what it was. Put it all back on Kira. Didn’t she know everything bad that ever happened was her fault? Kira refused to respond, and leaned over the arm of the couch digging in the black duffle that sat beside it on the floor that her gear had come out of. She came up with a silver flask, unscrewed the cap and took a long swig. Maybe a dram of bourbon would ease things all around. At the very least, if she drank enough of it she just wouldn’t give a damn for a while. Her father’s daughter indeed.

“What are you doing?” Maureen asked tightly.

“Poisoning myself some more,” Kira said sardonically. She couldn’t help it, it just rolled off her tongue like water.

Maureen made a noise. It couldn’t be called a growl or a grunt. It was this wet sound of utter disgust and fury. Then she was the rest of the way across the living room, cat released and scurrying for cover.  She hauled back and struck Kira across the cheek with her hand, hard. Kira’s head snapped sideways, cheek stinging.  Surely, her mother’s hand print already showed where it had struck.

Kira didn’t yelp. It wasn’t the first time her mother had slapped her in a fit of fury. It probably wouldn’t be the last and it damn sure wasn’t the worst thing she’d ever suffered. Not even close. At least her mother hadn’t gone off and beaten Kira’s head against a wall this time…for her own good…to protect her…from her Father…who would do worse. Logic? Who said anything about logic?

She righted her head and glared at her mother who glared back without a single ounce of apology.

“How dare you speak to me like that!” her mother hissed. Maureen’s mouth thinned and she began to say something else scathing when a cry of bloody murder blotted out anything she might have been about to say.  It sounded like a woman.

Kira automatically switched from disappointing daughter into Kaos, training kicking in without prompting. Her head snapped around like it was on ball bearings and she was on her feet, ears cocked for the source of the sound.

“It’s just a bobcat,” her mother said dismissively. “Calm down.” And it might be. There were woods behind the house and an angry bobcat’s caterwaul sounded exactly like a screaming woman. It had led to more than one story of ghostly women wandering the woods.

But then the scream came again. And Kaos’s expertly trained ears told her it was not coming from behind the house, it was coming from in front of it. From the direction of the highway and the house beyond that sat directly across from this one. The only other residence within a mile in either direction.

“That’s not a bobcat,” she said and quickly pushed the curtains on the window behind the couch aside so she could see the front lawn and the highway beyond.  She saw nothing at first. “Who lives across the road?”

“I don’t know. Some guy. He’s a doctor or something,” her mother said now showing a shade of worry.  

Kira resisted the urge to sneer. Leave it to her curmudgeon of a mother not to know anything at all about her neighbors. Chances were she’d never even spoken to them. Maureen Canady didn’t just dislike her disappointing daughter, she hated everyone that didn’t see the world her way.

Then Kira saw something. A woman, the shoulder of her pink sweater set stained dark, was running hell for leather across the highway fifty yards away, screaming at the top of her lungs, heedless of a pickup truck that nearly ran her over but didn’t stop.  In fact, the truck swerved, corrected and then floored it as though it was running away from the woman in terror.

Kira turned from the window, cast aside the flask of bourbon and picked up the pieces of her USP, putting it back together without looking at her hands and so fast, it would have been hard to tell which hand was doing what.

“Call the sheriff,” she demanded of her mother.

“Stay out of it Kira,” Maureen said. “It’s not any of our business.”

There was an entire tirade Kira could have leveled at her mother then. Maybe if someone had not ‘stayed out of it’ when she’d been younger things might have turned out different. But she had neither the time, patience or inclination to say it. Kira picked up the clip that went in the gun and shoved it home, then pulled back the slide.

“Call the sheriff and stay in the house,” she said sternly. It was an outright order. Her mother blanched. Kira Canady never spoke that way to her mother. Ever. But this wasn’t Kira Canady, this was Kaos.

“What are you doing!?” her mother shrieked eyeing the gun in her daughter’s hand with appall, but she was already half way across the room, heading toward the landline. Cell reception was non-existent indoors; you had to walk to the edge of the highway to get any at all.  The house was in a dead zone.

Kaos wrenched the front door open. “Not staying out of it,” she said. She stepped through the door and out onto the stoop, gun down by her thigh and ready but not raised. There might be no need for it but better safe than sorry. Marines had a saying, ‘Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everyone you meet.’

The woman had made it across the highway in the seconds it took Kaos to get out the door. The air was cool and a faint breeze blew across the immaculately groomed front lawn, bereft of anything but a single naked tree in the center, making Kaos’s bare skin erupt in chill bumps and carrying the woman’s voice with it.

“Help!” the woman screamed raggedly. She’d spotted Kaos and was running full tilt toward the house. But she was no longer alone. She was being chased. By a man, who was fast as hell and gaining. A man in a pair of khakis and loafers, slight beer gut hanging over his belt and balding, should not be able to move that fast. It was just wrong.  “He’s trying to kill me!” the woman screeched.

So that’s what it was.  Domestic violence. How ironic. Kaos set her jaw and blew hard through her nose in quiet, battle trained, fury. God damn bastard.

Kaos stepped off the stoop and advanced with a steady stride, swinging the gun up and aiming for the man pursuing the woman. She was close enough now to see that the dark stain was fresh blood soaked into the woman’s sweater as the woman, gaunt, pale and wild eyed ran toward her.

Kaos issued a single order to her as the woman ran, legs pumping faster than they probably ever had in her life. “Get inside!” Then she focused on her assailant as he gained ground on them. If he saw Kaos he showed no indication of it. He was running like a steam train after the woman as she blew past Kaos and made for the house.

If this had been a battlefield, Kaos would have pulled the trigger and been done with him. But this was not a battlefield. It was the backwoods of Georgia and these were civilians.  And the man, despite the woman having a bloody neck and shoulder and obviously in fear for her life, was not carrying any weapon that Kaos could see.

“Stop!” Kaos yelled at him, gun still leveled as he kept coming. He either didn’t hear her or didn’t care. “Stop now or I will shoot!” Still nothing. Behind her, she heard the front door of the house slammed shut with a reverberating echo as the woman made it to safety.

Kaos gritted her teeth, nothing for it. She shifted her aim slightly right and pulled the trigger. The bullet hit the man in the left shoulder—she wasn’t shooting to kill but to disable….and all he did was flinch like someone had bumped into him.

The man had to be jacked up on something. Meth was popular in these parts. That would explain the domestic violence on the woman, the ability to run like a line backer and not responding to a bullet through the shoulder. A meth head could barrel through a brick wall and never feel it.

A doctor who was a meth head? What the hell? Everything else in this place was so fucked up it wasn’t even believable unless you’d lived here. Why not? Besides, Kaos didn’t have time to worry about the incongruity of profession versus addiction since baldy was still trucking it across the lawn.

Fine. You can’t run if you can’t stand up.  Kaos lowered the muzzle of the USP and fired a second time. The man’s leg bent in at the wrong angle and blood spurted over the autumn killed lawn like ketchup escaping a burst bottle.  The man roared—it was more a feral bellow actually--in pain then, nearly toppling over but somehow, impossibly remaining on his feet.  She’d shot the man in the knee, he shouldn’t be able to do anything but lay on the ground and scream.

Leg bent, gait erratic the man kept coming and Kaos swore he got faster not slower. Plus, now he was close enough she could make out the details of his face. There was something horribly wrong with it.

It was twisted, grotesque as if he were made of plastic and his face had begun to melt exposed to high heat, like a leper. His lips were pulled back from his gums so his teeth were bared in a perpetual sick grin and his hands were deformed, looking more like talons. One side of his neck glistened crimson, the flesh sticky and torn as though something had tried to rip his throat out and failed.

“Holy hell,” Kaos muttered in shock. He wasn’t a meth head. That was for sure. She didn’t know what the hell was wrong with the man. She didn’t particularly care either.  Absurdly she had the thought that he looked like a zombie from a classic Romero flick.

Except zombies shambled. He didn’t.

Kaos took out the man’s other knee, hoping it would finally disable him. She didn’t want to kill him. He was a civilian and maybe this wasn’t a very fucked up case of domestic violence, maybe there was something genuinely wrong with the man. A disease or an illness that had caused him to go mad. Something a doctor might be able to fix.  Did leprosy make you insane? She couldn’t recall at the moment.

The man toppled and for an instant Kaos thought that would be it. But the man flailed in agony a moment and then dragged himself up, roaring like an enraged animal.

Moving at a speed that wasn’t humanly possible, the man shot up off the ground and streaked across the lawn for Kaos. Furious he had been waylaid from his course and his intended victim and apparently recognizing that he wasn’t going to reach his victim as long as Kaos was still standing. That or she’d just really pissed him off.

“Crap,” she hissed through clenched teeth. She didn’t want to kill the guy until she knew what was what but good intentions only went so far before it turned into stupidity. The gun leveled at the man, Kaos tried one more time, as he steamrolled toward her railing like a beast, to break through whatever the hell was wrong with the crazed fucker to the reason underneath. If there ever had been any. “Stop!”

The man paid her words no heed. Kaos pulled the trigger.  The man’s head jerked backward and a plume of blood and tissue sprayed from the back of his skull.

Kaos had no issue hitting anything she aimed at. She had inherited her father’s deadeye and her previous MOS, before Reaper had handpicked her and Irish for the RRTS, was classified as 0317- Scout Sniper.  She was now classified, officially, as a MOS 0373-Critical Skills Operator/RRTS. They were the people you called when even MARSOC couldn’t get the job done and the nifty title only meant that all her previous MOS’s--Rifleman, Assaultman and Scout Sniper--had been compiled into one for easier paperwork.

The man shrieked and keeled over, unmoving. Immediately, Kaos advanced on him, keeping clear of his arms should he not be as dead as he ought to be.  He looked dead. Sprawled on the brown grass, eyes staring blankly at the darkening sky. A neat hole pierced in the left side of his forehead and blood pooling beneath it. The back of his skull wouldn’t be so neat.

“Damn it,” she muttered. Why couldn’t he have listened? Bat shit crazy motherfucker.

Kaos eyed the body and then shot it in the heart, finishing the job. Another Marine saying ran through her mind: ‘Anything worth shooting is worth shooting twice. Ammo is cheap. Life is expensive.’  In other words, make sure the enemy is dead.

She peered down at the corpse, her brow furrowing. She’d never seen anything like what was wrong with this guy. His face was monstrously deformed and his eyes were wrong. What the hell had done that to him? The blood seeping into the grass looked weird. Despite the fact it was fresh, little black bits were in it. Dirt from the ground caught in the slow flood maybe. She shook her head and sighed, perplexed.

The front door of the house opened and her mother peered out of it. Kaos could hear the woman who’d been running from the corpse on the lawn wailing hysterically inside.

“Did I tell you to open the door?” Kaos snapped. “Get back in there!”

“Oh my God, is he dead?” her mother gasped ignoring her. She started to step out the door.

“Inside!” Kaos ordered again. Just because the guy was dead didn’t mean it was safe yet. She had no idea how many people were in the house across the road. There could be more victims or more potential enemies.

Her mother stood very straight, pushing the door further open, eyes blazing and her mouth puckering in indignant fury. “I am sixty-seven years old! You don’t tell me what to do! I’m not one of your jarhead friends!”

Damn it. Why couldn’t she listen just once?  Kaos grimaced and left the corpse where it lay. “No,” she said stalking back toward the house. “You’re a civilian. Now get back in the Goddamn house!”

Her arrival forced her mother to comply or get walked over. The look in her mother’s eyes was pure awe and not in a good way. She’d slung ‘You kill people’ as a debased insult. She’d never actually seen the insult played out on the front lawn of her prim little house.

Her mother backed into the house again and Kaos shoved the door shut, throwing deadbolt, thumb lock and chain home.

“Is he dead?” her mother asked again, her tone still pissed off at Kaos’s audacity but tempered by what might have been fear…of what had just happened or the fact that it had sunk home that her useless daughter really did kill people Kaos didn’t know.

“Very,” Kaos said.

“You didn’t even blink. You didn’t hesitate,” her mother muttered. “You don’t even look upset.”

Kira winced at the sound of sickened awe in her mother’s voice. It had always been there but now it was thick as mud and it made Kira feel…vile and dirty. She was bothered to some degree but hesitation got you, and anyone you were protecting, killed. She didn’t address the remark. She moved on to the next job that needed doing.

“Did you call the sheriff?” she asked turning away from the door.  The cats—being wiser than human beings--were nowhere to be seen, having bolted for safety and not inclined to come out yet.

The woman in the bloody pink sweater was sitting in her mother’s recliner sobbing loudly, clutching her wounded shoulder over what looked like her mother’s expert handiwork. It looked like her mother had torn a sheet into strips and bound the woman’s shoulder with it lacking the type of equipment someone would need for something like that. Even a regular first aid kit didn’t come with the kind of bandaging you’d need for something that serious. Blood had already seeped through the blue and pink floral pattern of the sheet.

Maureen Canady might be an insensitive and uncaring woman to her daughter but she knew how to treat wounded. She’d been a nurse when Kira was growing up. In fact, she was better equipped to handle calming down the hysterical woman than Kira was. She’d been a nurse at Central State Hospital, the ever so gently named insane asylum that had spurred the plot line of every asylum horror movie ever created and had in its heyday been the largest asylum in the nation and the second largest in the world, housing more than 13 thousand patients. Now it only housed a thousand but the song remained the same.

“Yes,” Maureen answered honestly as Kira walked past her and returned to the coffee table. She put down the USP and began reassembling the M40A5 and the UMP. She wanted them ready and at hand. The UMP might be overkill, but Marines like overkill. Overkill means whatever you killed, stayed killed.

“But they put me on hold because they were being flooded with calls and never came back.”

Kira cut a glance at her mother, frowning. That sounded bad and Kira did not believe in coincidence. Not when what was laying on the front lawn looked like his face had been melted and he’d moved that fast.  “What about the police?”

Her mother nodded, making her way back to the hysterically sobbing woman. The woman was murmuring something between sobs but it was so muddled Kira couldn’t make out what she was saying. At least Kira could say that about her mother, she could and would hold it together in a crisis and she wasn’t stupid. Maureen snagged a crocheted afghan off the back of her recliner and wrapped it around the woman then sat down on the footstool next to the recliner and wrapped a consoling arm around her that Kira tried not to feel bitter about. Her mother hadn’t done that for her not even when… but she didn’t have time to think about her dysfunctional family issues right now.  

“Tried but all I got was a busy signal. You can’t get through.”

Kira’s frown deepened. She didn’t like that at all. “Wonderful.” She didn’t bother asking about 911. It was routed through the Sheriff’s Department in this Podunk town and then rerouted again to the Police Department if you lived in the ‘city’ limits.  If you couldn’t reach the Sheriff’s Department…you couldn’t reach 911.  There would be no help from law enforcement for now.

Not that that was really a surprise even when you could reach them. Fully half were in the job because they were egotistical sociopaths who got a kick out of the power trip being a law enforcement officer gave them and another forty percent were dirty and significantly overlapped with the former. Kira should know…her father had been a part of both categories.  The other ten percent were either incompetent through sheer stupidity, apathy or from a woeful lack of proper training.

She jerked her chin in the direction of the woman, rubbing the nape of her neck absently to thrust away the persistent ache there to no effect. “What about her?” The woman was shaking uncontrollably as well as babbling and her color was far too pallid. Kira knew the signs of shock when she saw it.

Her mother was a nurse and Kira was certain that the job she’d done of caring for the woman’s wound was the absolute best that could be managed given the circumstances but her mother thought like a civilian. It would never occur to her that her daughter, ever prepared as the RRTS perpetually were, had all her gear with her and that in the gear was a field medikit, far more useful than the first aid kits you could buy at the drug store. It was triage in a pouch.

Kira set down the half assembled UMP and went around the corner of the couch, dragging her rucksack up from next to her duffle bag. She dug inside as her mother answer her question. Well hot damn two answered questions without an argument.

“She’s hurt pretty bad. Her neck is torn all to hell. He bit her! Like an animal!” her mother said outraged. At that Kira’s eyebrows rose as she searched with her hand for her tactical vest and the medikit stashed in it. The guy on the lawn had looked like something had tried to tear his throat out. Was that what had caused this? Some screwy ass form of rabies? Rabies was fairly common out here given all the woods and wildlife but how the hell had the guy become infected if that’s what it was? “She needs more help than I can give her. She needs stitches and treatment for shock.”

Kira’s fingers closed on what she was looking for and she dragged it free. She tossed it to her mother who caught it out of reflex peering at the silver packet. “Use that. There’s quickclot in there.”

Maureen moved immediately to do so, ripping the top off the packet and gently easing aside afghan and previous handiwork murmuring soothingly to the shivering, muttering woman as she set to work.

“She coherent at all?” Kira asked as she picked the UMP back up and snapped on the last piece then started loading all of the guns. She needed to know what the hell was going on, how this had started, if there was anyone else at the woman’s house who could be hurt or might be affected the same way as the guy on the lawn, whatever they were affected by.

Maureen shook her head, eyeing Kira and the guns unhappily for an instant before she resumed applying the kaolin-based quickclot bandage. The irony that the house set on the edge of an abandoned kaolin mine was not lost on Kira. “No. I can’t even get her name.”

“My husband,” the woman managed to say through her racking sobs. “He’s my husband.”  She eyed the guns with utter terror but Kira took no offense, the woman was traumatized and scared shitless. She didn’t expect nerves of steel out of a civilian, though it was nice when they didn’t come unglued on you and create an even larger problem. Which happened exactly never.

Kira had already assumed the guy was either the woman’s husband, her lover or her boyfriend. “What happened?” she asked hoping the woman’s muttering wasn’t just slightly more understandable but unthinking babble.

The woman shook her head violently. “I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know.”

Kira started to move toward her and the woman recoiled, looking at her like she was a bear about to eat her. Kira glanced at the UMP she was holding and about to load, the M40A5 was already loaded and the USP had half a clip left in it. She held both hands up so the woman could see them and slowly set the submachine gun back on the coffee table then raised her hands again so the woman could see she wasn’t armed anymore.

“Shhh,” her mother comforted the woman. “You don’t have to say anything right now. You just take a moment and calm down.”

“I’m sorry but she does,” Kira said and her voice was genuinely apologetic. She didn’t like having to traumatize the poor woman further but she had to know what the situation was. _Now_.

Her mother glared at her. “For Christ’s Sake Kira. Give her a minute!”

“I can’t,” Kira spat back and then looked to the woman as she crept closer, slowly dropping down on one knee so she would be on a lower level than the woman was, a non-threat.

“Ma’am,” she said quietly, calmly. “I know you are really scared right now. But I need you to tell me what happened.”

“You killed my husband,” the woman muttered brokenly. Kira swallowed and glanced away briefly, guiltily.  The woman was confused and frightened. She was in mental and physical shock. Her husband had just tried to kill her and Kira had killed him. The woman must not know what to think right now.

“I did. And if you want to hate me that’s okay. I’m used to it. But I need you to tell me what happened.”

“I don’t know!” the woman wailed.  “He came home from work and…and… I don’t know!”

“Okay. Okay,” Kira said soothingly holding her hands up again and tried not to groan in annoyance at the lack of cooperation. The woman couldn’t help it but comforting the frightened wasn’t exactly her forte, she’d never known it so she didn’t know how to do it. “Just tell me, is there anyone else at your house? Anyone who could be hurt? Anyone who was acting like your husband?”

The woman nodded jerkily and resumed sobbing. “Our son. He killed our son.” Then she started sobbing twice as hard as she had before.

Kira grimaced sadly and hazarded placing a hand on the woman’s knee.  God she hoped their son hadn’t been a child. Bad enough to lose their son at all. “I’m so sorry,” she said softly and sincerely while simultaneously trying not to chafe at how slowly she was getting anything from the woman.

“Will you leave her alone now?” her mother bit viciously. “The poor woman just lost her child. Or do you need to interrogate her some more?”

That was loaded. Kira cut a hot glare at her mother then and a thousand violent, silent and cruel words passed between mother and daughter. That was a low fucking blow and her mother knew it.  Kira glanced back at the woman. “Just one more question. Was your son the only other person in the house?”

The woman nodded, clenching her eyes shut and wailing miserably in grief. Kira squeezed the woman’s knee as she sagged into her mother’s embrace and her mother glared accusingly at her over the woman’s head.

Then there was horrible sound of tearing metal and wood and a cold rush of air through the living room, sending the curtains fluttering as the front door was there…and then it wasn’t, followed by an inhuman roar of rage that made every hair on Kira’s body stand on end.


	2. Prologue Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The fit hits the shan for Kaos as she slowly begins to realize something is desperately wrong with her hometown.

Hell was that sound. She’d heard quite a few non-human roars, bellows and screams in her lifetime. Pissed off lions in Africa, angry hawks in the Middle East, furious wolves in Europe, ticked off tigers in India, bears, elephants, even a seriously irritated alligator that the team had accidently wandered up on in the middle of Colombian rainforest. None of them evoked the jolt of sheer terror that sound did. If demons were real, they’d sound like that.

No sooner had the door ceased to exist than what was left of the guy on the lawn burst through the hole it had made. The only reason Kira could even tell it was the fucking-supposed-to-be-dead guy on the lawn was because it was still wearing its clothes but any resemblance to a human being was gone. What had resembled talons now were in absolute fact, long scythe like appendages that dangled from the thing’s fingers. The thing’s head had expanded, the nose pulled back into the skull to make room for the set of viciously sharp teeth that protruded like crooked daggers from it’s far too large mouth. Its skin was no longer flesh colored but the gray of a corpse and beneath it the doughy muscles had turned into rippling masses of brawn. Blood turned black dripped from the wounds Kaos had inflicted on it, slow and thick like molasses.

Maureen and the woman screamed shrilly. Kaos reacted, diving from her knelt position for the coffee table and the guns as the thing came for them, the rush of adrenaline one pudgy possibly sick or jacked up doctor out of his mind hadn’t provoked now in overdrive.

The thing sent anything in its way flying. A cat, flushed from its hiding place yowled and sprang for the nearest escape point disappearing through the gaping hole where the front door had been. The thing flung a side table across the room. Maureen and the woman shrieked again and tried to scramble out of harm’s way.  Kaos laid hands on the guns.

She’d shot the son of a bitch five times! She’d shot it in the head and the heart. Why the fuck wasn’t it dead!?

The USP’s firepower obviously hadn’t done the job. The UMP wasn’t loaded yet. That left the M40A5. Cursing herself for letting her guard down to try to coax information from the woman and thinking Reaper  would have kicked her ass for putting down her weapon if he were here—damn she’d been sure the fucker was dead--Kaos’s hands closed on it. She came up off the floor shouldering the sniper rifle and sending the bolt home at the same time.

But the half a second it had taken to dive and grab the rifle had given the preternaturally fast beast time to get to her. She was too close. It swept a clawed arm out like a battering ram sending Kaos hurtling across the room and into the far picture window, shattering the glass in a hail of crystalline shards. The back of her head and one shoulder struck the window frame and suddenly her ears were ringing, bright lights reeled in front of her and her neck and head exploded with pain. She thunked to the floor, the curtain rod and drapes falling over her and obscuring her vision and movement. She did not drop the rifle.

Kaos scrambled to get the damned drapes off of her so she could shoot, mildly pissed off she was getting her ass handed to her by a doctor wearing Dockers. She ignored the pain, she’d suffered worse in battle—gunshot wounds and broken limbs were a bitch--but damn that couldn’t have been good for anything, getting whacked in the skull like that and it was going to leave a mark in the morning.

Her mother and the woman shrieked again but it sounded more distant as they tried to make a run for the hall and the kitchen. Something toppled and was followed by many smaller things plopping after it. The bookcase.  Whether the monster had flung it or someone had shoved it over in an attempt to slow the thing down Kaos didn’t know.

Kaos got the drapes off her head and didn’t bother with getting them any further or attempting to get off the floor. She rolled so her right shoulder was clear and leveled the gun. The monster was roaring, scythe tipped hands reaching for Maureen and the woman who were screaming madly caught against the wall next to the threshold into the hall and unable to escape. The monster was trying to get to Kaos’s mother, it was completely ignoring its wife who was huddled behind Maureen eyes crazed as if her mind had snapped.

Without hesitation, Kaos aimed and fired. The sound of the rifle going off in the small room was like a bomb exploding and the ringing in Kaos’s ears doubled. A 7.62 Nato round punched through the monster’s head and at this range obliterated it completely.  Brain matter, black blood and gooey bits of monster head fountained all over the room, leaving it flecked with biomatter. If the fucking thing hadn’t been dead before it sure as hell was now. The headless body wobbled for an instant and then crumpled to the floor with a thud. Maureen and the woman screamed louder, if that was possible.

Kaos dragged herself the rest of the way from beneath the fallen drapes, trying to avoid shards of glass. “I don’t think,” she said with a grunt as she got to her feet, “that,” she waved at the headless corpse on the floor with the rifle muzzle, “falls under police jurisdiction.” She glared at the corpse on the floor and snarled. Her blood was still up, adrenaline pumping. She kicked the damned thing once viciously.  Her mother made a whimpering noise and gave her that appalled look that made her feel like she was as much a monster as the dead one on the floor again.

“You said you killed it!” her mother shrilled, still huddled next to the wall as though she were afraid the thing would get up again. The woman had ceased to scream; now she stared blankly and muttered gibberish.

“I thought I did. _Obviously_ , I was wrong,” Kira said sarcastically, rubbing at her bruised aching head, neck and shoulder.

“What a surprise,” Maureen shot. Kira ignored it. Her mother’s venomous barbs were the least of her problems.  More softly her mother asked eyes riveted on the dead thing. “What is it?”

“Hell if I know,” Kira said. She looked at the dead thing on the floor again and thought about what to do now. “But one thing I do know. We can’t stay here.”

Kira had no idea what had been wrong with the doctor but whatever it was, it wasn’t rabies and it wasn’t drugs. Neither made you look like …that.  There was no way local law enforcement could handle something like that thing dead on her mother’s living room floor, parts of it sprayed all over the furniture and walls, even if they could get a hold of them. The sudden rush of calls to the Sherriff’s Department and the lack of an answer at the Police Department couldn’t be a coincidence. And as a Marine you learned, where there was smoke, there was bound to be fire. What were the chances something that fucked up was an isolated anomaly? Pretty much zilch. Which meant whatever had caused this…would probably cause more of it.

Barney Fife versus hellspawn. Yeah, that was gonna happen. This called for something a little more intimidating. Time to call in the RRTS 6 Hellfighters.  

But first, she was going to try reaching law enforcement again. Quickly Kira did the math in her head. No small feat, she sucked at math, but by her estimation even if she contacted RRTS now it would be at least thirteen hours before they could get here hauling ass. Somebody needed to find out what the hell was going on and try to contain it long before then and the only option was the painfully inadequate excuse for law enforcement this place had.

She also wanted as much information as she could get to relay to Reaper. The woman was not going to be any help. She’d descended completely into mad gibbering. Kira winced feeling sorry for her but she didn’t have time for sympathy. Besides she was horrible at it.

“What do you mean we can’t stay here?” her mother demanded to know as Kira stepped over the corpse and went across the room, searching for the cordless phone in the debris one handed, refusing to put the rifle down this time. A cordless phone. Hell, this town was so far behind everyone else that even their phone lines were still using old tech instead of the newer and standard digital comms. It even still had landlines for Christ’s sake. The Mayor had proclaimed their ‘reluctance to convert to new technologies’ was because it would ‘destroy the rich history of this vitally important part of the Antebellum South’. Milledgeville didn’t even have ViFi, it still had forty year old WiFi. Slow as hell and prone to dead zones just like the cell reception.

Kira had offered to move her mother out to California instead of buying this place but her mother had refused, claiming that she was too old for that kind of move and that she preferred to stay somewhere ‘quiet and stable’ not a big city. Regardless of the substandard tech, the sorry law enforcement, the long distances between services and the deplorable excuse for a health care system.

“Well, the front door is somewhere in the front yard. There’s a dead monster on the floor whose head is now decorating your living room walls. And do you really think that,” she said nodding her head toward the corpse, “was a fluke of nature?” Her mother glanced at it and turned a shade whiter than usual. No, she knew that was not a fluke of nature. Kira found the phone, half buried under the side of the upturned recliner.

“Who are you calling?” Maureen asked as Kira raised the phone, line open, to her ear.

“My jarhead friends,” Kira snarked but her retort was cut short as she listened for a dial tone and only got her own voice echoing back to her through the receiver. The line was dead.  Kira wasn’t calling the cops or the RRTS by landline. “Shit.”

“What now?”

“Phone’s dead,” Kira said tossing it back into the debris where she’d gotten it. It was useless now but that worried her. There were only two reasons the line would be dead. Either the monster had been smart enough to rip the phone line out….or it wasn’t just this line it was all of them and the town’s communications capability was gone. Both ideas were deeply troubling and suggested an intelligence behind the thing on the floor that was a terrifying concept.

One option for communication left. Her cell. But she’d gather as much information as she could before she tried it. It meant going outside and walking the 50 yards to the road.

She had one other possibility if the cell failed. But she hesitated to use it unless there was absolutely no other way.

Kira knelt down by the decapitated body, leaning her rifle against her shoulder and without flinching shoved her hands into the front pockets of the thing’s khakis looking for ID or some clue as to what the hell had caused this.  Because if it was intelligent and she was right about either reason for the loss of telephone service, that implied that there were potentially more of the things out there already wreaking havoc.

She found nothing in the front pockets as her mother watched her with horrified eyes, rifling through the dead thing’s pockets.

“You’re looting the corpse?!” she said incredulous. “That’s so human of you.”

“I’m looking for ID or a receipt or anything to give us a clue, Mom. Jesus,” Kira spat as she moved to grab the thing shoulders and turn it over. She pretended the remark hadn’t made her feel more like a debased animal than a person and gave a heaving groan and sent it rolling. It settled with a sick, wet thump that made her mother wince. The woman was too far gone to do anything but stand there, shivering and babbling to herself. Kira pushed her hands into the back pockets and hit pay dirt. A wallet.

Kira tugged it out and stood up as she unfolded it.  Even the damned Driver’s License was still a 2d static card instead of the 2d or 3d holocards everyone else in the country used but it gave her a clue. The monster on the floor had once been called Dr. Ernest Menville. But the driver’s license wasn’t enough, his name didn’t matter right now. She rifled through the rest of the wallet, and where the thing would have once housed cash money, now replaced with a purely electronic system and bitcoins, was another ID with a shirt clip attached and a strip on the back as though it were meant to be swiped for security access. Kira pulled it out and cursed. “Ah hell.”

The ID read: UAC Aerospace and Interspace Transportation Research and Development Facility Personnel: Milledgeville Division.  It gave his name again and beneath that claimed he was a ‘Aero/Interspace Scientist’ with Level 5 clearance.

That didn’t exactly help Kira understand what the hell was going on. The Union Aerospace Corporation was the single largest business conglomerate in the world and it owned most of it. It was so large and had its fingers in so many pies that if you could think of it UAC was somehow involved with it. From public media to medical research and archeology, to the government itself. The UAC had power such that it was the government in everything but name. Earth had become a corporatocracy sometime in the 2020s and the UAC was the top dog, swallowing its primary competitor Massive Dynamic whole. And it didn’t mind ruffling a few feathers or even plucking the whole chicken then wringing its neck to reach its goals.

As a result, there were many anti-UAC groups disgruntled with the state of affairs and more than one had gone from group to militias and some to outright armies. Which meant that fully fifty percent of the time the payor on the digital receipt for Kira’s paychecks were signed ‘UAC’. The RRTS ostensibly served the USMC and the country, but because UAC for all intents and purposes owned the government, serving the UAC often meant the same thing.

That being said, it still made no sense how an aero/interspace scientist had become the thing on the floor. The Facility here, which was on the other side of the county, was focused on transportation development. Most notably the attempt to find a way to turn Ark technology—a tech gleaned from finds on Mars if Kira remembered right--into a viable transportation method for planetside travel on Earth. Enabling Ark Portals to be placed all over the world that could transport someone from one to another in seconds and no doubt at a premium cost for the trip.

But the research had come to a screeching halt when the only established Ark Facility in Papoose Lake, Nevada had suddenly blown itself all to hell a few years ago. But what had happened or why Kira didn’t know. It had been shut up almost instantly and no one had heard anything about it since. At any rate, the research had stopped without the original Ark to draw from and as far as Kira knew the local facility had returned to more conventional research and development of aerospace and potential interspace transportation. None of which remotely explained one of their scientists becoming a monster.

However, there was one thing for absolute certain. If the UAC was involved, there was some connection and that was _bad_. Which only reinforced the fact that Kira needed to get a hold of Reaper and the others immediately because God knew what was really going on here.

“Ah hell what?” Maureen asked pulling Kira from her grim consideration of the ID. The woman had given up standing and was now sitting on the floor babbling, rocking back and forth.

“He worked for UAC,” Kira offered. She folded the wallet back up and stuck the ID back inside.

“So?” her mother asked, unaware of the implications. She was a civilian only familiar with the nice public face of UAC.

“So that’s possible a bad thing,” Kira said in explanation and said no more as she moved away from the corpse and to her rucksack. She did not want to get caught up in a long winded explanation with her mother that would only lead to Maureen have a conniption fit. She had all the information she was going to get. Time to try her cell but she was not going back out that door dressed in a tank top, jeans and sneakers. Not when she had no clue if there were any more crazed scientists out there. She set the M40A5 against the side of the couch and started stripping.

“What are you doing?” Maureen asked incredulously.

“Going outside,” Kira said succinctly as she kicked her sneakers off and shed her jeans. She reached in the rucksack and dragged out her BDUs and boots. “Start packing. Medicines, ID, bitcoin sticks…necessities only. Not clothes or food or anything like that. Just what you have to have to survive. We are not carrying more weight than we have to.”

“ _Excuse me_?”

“And get her,” Kira nodded in the direction of the woman who had clearly had a nervous breakdown on top of everything else that had happened to her today, “moveable.”  She started hauling her dusty black BDUs on.

“I’m not your servant,” her mother spat petulantly as Kira pulled the ponytail band out of her hair, raked it back more tightly than it had been and secured it again.

“For God’s sake!” Kira spat at her as she sat down on the couch to put on her boots trying to avoid as much of the gore splattered on it as possible.  “Just do it!”

Her mother puffed up like an angry Pekinese. She gave Kira that monstrous snarl of utter hatred and disdain again. Then she looked at the dead thing on the floor that had been Dr. Menville and whatever vicious retort or refusal she had been preparing to say died in her throat.  She turned on her heel and stalked off muttering lower than she thought Kira could hear, “Bitch,” but she complied. Apparently, survival instinct trumped petty insults and the need to be the one in control. For now.

“Stand up when you say that,” Kira called after her, pulling on her boots neither expecting a reply nor getting one. Next came fingerless gloves and knee and elbow pads. She plucked her dog tags from her bag, dropping them around her neck with a tinkle of metal. Then both ‘Y’ thigh rigs went on. One held her USP and an extra clip for it. The other held dual sheaths into which went the combat knife she’d been cleaning earlier.  On the back of the belt the rigs were attached to three more pockets that housed an extra clip for all her other guns, one for each, including her assault rifle which was back at RRTS Headquarters.

She pulled out her tactical vest, which was already loaded down and kitted, and shrugged it on. It was covered in pockets all over the place, which were filled with extra clips for all four guns—another two a piece—a small flashlight, extra batteries for the flashlight and gunsights, a small weapon cleaning kit, a whet stone, a pocket she reserved for her flask which promptly went inside it, the remaining of her two medikits and the kickers, two ST grenades. Her cell phone and Dr. Menville’s wallet she shoved in her pants pocket and checked that her watch was secure on her wrist.

Last, she hooked the combination earpiece/microphone for her comm over her ear and threaded it down over her collarbone and under the shoulder of the vest. It slid through a small flap made for the purpose and dangled, waiting to be hooked to the comm. Kira hooked her comm. unit to the vest and clicked the earpiece’s adapter into place. The unit was useless to her right now. It was short range digital radio meant to for use between the team members on a mission but she wanted it on now. She had no intention of getting out of her gear again until this was over and it was a bitch to get any of it on out of order. So on it went.

It was then that Maureen came back. She had her purse, which probably had everything but the kitchen sink in it and weighed as much as a bowling ball over her shoulder and a floral printed lunch bag that served as her ‘medicine bag’, full of everything from Tylenol and multivitamins to any leftover antibiotics and painkillers saved from the remnants of dozen of prescriptions over the years hooked on her elbow. The definition of a hoarder, Kira’s mother never got rid of them. Ever.  

The only reason the house was not one massive storage building with narrow pathways eked out between boxes and bags—like her childhood home had been--was because Kira had pitched an unholy fit and refused to buy it if that’s how her mother was going to treat the place.  Maureen had listened…to an extent. The rest of the house was alright but the master bedroom had become her hoard, half the king size bed consumed by junk her mother refused to get rid of and leaving barely enough room for Maureen to sleep.

Maureen stopped halfway into the living room, medicine bag and purse swaying forgotten on her arm and her eyes wide as she peered back at Kira as she picked up the M40A5 again. Maureen had never seen Kira kitted out in her gear. She’d never even seen her in BDUs before, refusing to even acknowledge her daughter’s chosen profession unless it suited her need to rail at her and now the look on her face was not respect or pride. It was mortified awe. Her eyes went glassy and her mouth trembled as though she were going to start bawling.

“Why couldn’t you have become a nurse or a medical transcriptionist like I wanted?” she bemoaned again. “Why’d you have to become…this _thing_? This isn’t who you’re supposed to be.” She didn’t see Kira, she didn’t even see Kaos whose name she didn’t even know, she only saw a killer armed to the teeth and perfectly willing to use it. Never enough. Nothing Kira did was ever enough. Nothing she didn’t do was ever enough.

Kira glanced away from her for an instant and forced down the welter of childish hurt and betrayal that her mother was never going to be proud of her or accept her. That she’d always be an epic disappointment to Maureen. The only use she had for Kira was as the caretaker she’d been conceived and birthed to be and in that she had failed miserably. The progeny of a psychopath, eternal echo of her Father.  A monster in a human’s skin. All she’d ever be was a failure. Worthless and useless if she wasn’t what she’d been born for and unworthy of her own aspirations and goals.

“Are you ready?” Kira asked her mother trying to keep the tightness from her voice, compartmentalizing and stuffing her wounded emotions in a dark corner of her mind along with the absolute horror she felt over what had been Dr. Menville, locking it away. She wondered sometimes if one day she’d run out of dark corners to lock things in.

“I’ve got what I’m gonna get,” Maureen answered edging around the corpse in the floor. It wasn’t an affirmative but it was all Kira was likely to get. The slim cooperation had lasted five minutes and her mother was ratcheting back up to obstinate superiority again.  The woman, now a widow, seemed completely disconnected from reality, acknowledging neither their existence nor anything else as she sat muttering and rocking.

“Alright,” Kira acknowledged, crossing over to her mother with the sniper rifle. “Here,” she said hefting the rifle onto her shoulder. “It’s a bolt action.” She pulled back the bolt and pushed it forward again, putting one of the four remaining rounds in the magazine in the chamber. Then she demonstrated where the safety was and how you could, at need, wrap the rifle’s sling around your wrist for added stability. “The magazine goes here.” She indicated beneath the breach where one was already in place, three of its original five rounds still inside. She pulled a second magazine from her vest and pressed it on her mother. “Just snap it in.” She held the rifle out to her. Maureen looked at her incredulously. “Take it,” she urged jerking her chin toward her mother’s purse where the butt of her .22 snub nose peeked out. “If there’s more of these things that will just piss it off.”

Her mother took the rifle and gave it a wary once over. She knew how to shoot but this wasn’t a pop gun, it was a weapon of war. Kira knew what she was thinking from the quiet disgust in her expression. ‘This gun has been used to kill people.’ It wasn’t some ‘maybe’ or ‘theoretical’ idea. It was fact. Kira pretended she hadn’t seen the look.

“Load, aim, fire,” Kira said. “Don’t you hesitate….and don’t forget to turn off the safety.”

Her mother started to puff up like an indignant Pekinese then. “I know how to shoot a gun!”

“Just be careful. It has a lot of kick,” Kira said.

“I know what I’m doing.”

Kira could only sigh and shrug. “Okay.”  The sniper rifle wasn’t the ideal weapon to be using for the job, the load time was too slow even with the optional magazine but it had the stopping power to get it done in a pinch. Of course, it could also stop _you_ if you weren’t used to shooting something with twenty five pounds of recoil. But _of course_ , her mother could deal with anything Kira could and do it better. Kira was frankly astounded her mother hadn’t outright told her she was wrong on how to operate the rifle in the first place. Hovering and telling Kira how to do even the most mundane tasks was one of her favorite past times.

Maureen slipped the rifle’s sling over her shoulder with arrogance born of fear and pride that she would never admit to as Kira turned and picked up the UMP, clapping in a clip and slinging it over her shoulder. She was taking something a little more effective than the .45 this time.

“Stay _here_ ,” she said to Maureen whose eyes flashed with fury at being told what to do. “Get her,” Kira nodded in the direction of Mrs. Menville, still babbling and rocking on the floor, “ready to leave. I’ll be right back.”

Her mother’s mouth thinned again and her eyes narrowed in anger but Kira didn’t wait for her to hurl some other insult or deprecation. She headed for the kitchen, wanting to cut through the back and work her way around so the she could check if the phone line had been ripped out.

Her boots, despite their heaviness, made no sound as she crept up to the back door and prepared to clear it. Kaos pressed her back to the wall next to the doorknob and listened for a moment but she heard nothing but Mrs. Menville’s mad muttering and her mother’s angry complaints to the air. A sharp pain lanced over her skull and she sucked in a hiss, momentarily rubbing at the back of it in a futile attempt to make it go away. The damn thing had gotten worse with that whack she’d taken when the monster had tossed her like a toy doll across the room.  She willed herself not to feel it, to ignore it as readily as she did everything else.

Then she took a deep breath, let it out slow and pushed the door open, letting it swing outward into the growing darkness. The sun had set and night was descending like a ominous cloud. Then she swung into the space, UMP up and ready. Nothing.

Kaos eased out the door, looking side to side and up and down before proceeding as she crept silently down the back steps to the grass.  Still nothing.

Keeping the house to her back and the UMP always trained in front of her, Kaos made her way the six yards across the narrow ‘back yard’ to the telephone interface box attached to a pole wedged next to the house with utter confidence in her abilities, controlled adrenaline coursing through her veins. This she was good at, this she knew how to do, this she did not doubt herself in. She knew stealth, battle and dealing death intimately.

If there was anything out here, it was going to get a very unpleasant surprise even if it managed to take her with it. Another Marine ‘Rule of Combat’: _‘Someday someone may kill you with your own weapon, but they should have to beat you to death with it because it is empty’_. Kaos’s UMP would be empty.  And if it took her with it, well it’d be solving two problems with one stone. It’d be better that way.

The telephone interface box was untouched, the pad lock in the outside of the heavy duty industrial plastic casing perfectly intact and the lines running to and from the bottom of the box unmarred and whole.

Kaos wasn’t sure it that reassured her or terrified her more. The monster hadn’t had the forethought, or hopefully the intelligence, to disable the phones and yet the phones were down. It did not bode well and again Kaos worried this went beyond just one unfortunate UAC scientist and his family.

She worked her way around the house in the dark, passing along the side nearest to the highway and stopped at the corner. The front yard was completely open and offered no corner but there was no other way to get up to the highway to get a signal for her cell. Cursing the place’s lack of current tech and wide ranging cell signals, she braved the open and high tailed it up to the edge of the highway, barely glancing at the splintered front door of her mother’s house lying on the lawn and wishing fervently that she had Ash and the others at her back.

There, vehicles flying by at an alarming pace and more alarming still not even looking twice at a fully kitted Marine standing on the roadside as they passed as though they were fleeing, Kaos pulled out her cell and searched for a signal, eyes always roving back and forth for signs of danger. But no matter where she moved to…the cell’s holoscreen declared ‘No Service’. The cell reception out here sucked but it wasn’t nonexistent.

Finally, she was forced to accept the fact that she was not going to contact the RRTS by cell. She cursed a stream of profanities that would have made the most hardened Marine pale and crammed the cell back in her pocket alongside Dr. Menville’s wallet. There was only one other option, her last resort.

It could not be a coincidence that the phone lines, cell reception and the ability to contact law enforcement were all not operational. Flat out could not be. It was one of the first rules of a siege. Cut the target off from all communication with the outside and hem them in.

God, she should never have come back here. No matter what the reason or the desperation. It was hell and once it got its claws into you it wouldn’t let you leave. It would drag you back and eat you whole. Resisting the temptation to yell in frustration she peered around and noticed the driveway of the house across the highway. Dr. Menville’s house.

There were two vehicles on the driveway and they looked off, as though they were sitting at the wrong angle. The garage door was open and the front door ajar. Kaos tilted her head in consideration the way a cat contemplates a mouse and decided to investigate. Maybe it would yield up more than the dead monster in the living room and its widow had. Maybe their son was still hanging onto life by a thread and the poor woman in her mother’s living room would get some sort of reprieve from this nightmare. Then they were getting the hell out of here and to somewhere more defensible.

Gauging her opportunity between speeding vehicles and eyes always sharpened for an enemy Kaos made a sprint for the other side of the highway, gear and gun rattling in time with her stride.  

On the other side she immediately bolted for cover, moving from the mailbox stand to a bush and from the bush to the back of the nearest vehicle. A SUV it was large, silver-beige, nondescript and had four flat tires. Upon investigation it became clear that all four had been slashed and not cleanly. Torn was more apt, five ragged punctures ripped into the vulcanized rubber.

Kaos quelled inside. She’d been wrong. The monster hadn’t disabled the phones but it wasn’t because it wasn’t capable of thinking about doing it. The other vehicle a red Prius, was the way. Both vehicles had been deliberately disabled. So the woman and her son couldn’t run away. The fact the monster hadn’t decided to disable their vehicles might hinge solely on the fact that they were in the garage and it had simply taken the expedient route of invading the house like a behemoth. Oh hell why couldn’t it be dumb monsters?

Warily slinking in the deepening dark, Kaos made for the porch of the house but she stopped short at the foot of the steps. A man, a young one--twenty if he was a day--was sprawled face down on the  ground and very dead, eyes staring down the drive way like flat blank saucers as sticky pooled blood beneath him coagulated. The Menville’s son.

Kaos checked the area for signs of danger and then knelt, using her small flashlight to get a better look at the body as encroaching night stole the last of the light. Like his father and his mother, his throat was a torn ruin but where the father had failed with the mother, he had not with his son.  

Kaos sighed sadly. So damn young. Respectfully she reached out and gently slid the corpse’s eyes shut. She took no time to feel sorry for the poor kid. She couldn’t let herself feel that sort of thing right now. Kaos rose and hastened back the way she had come, back toward her mother’s house.

There was no question now that they had to get out of here and quickly. The dark would make defense harder and the house was not a good option. They needed communications capability and defensibility somewhere that Kaos could find out what the hell was going on.

That was a tall order in this backwater and there was only one place Kaos could think of that would fit the bill without being too remote. The Police Department. It was defensible, centrally located, near an Army Surplus store, had an armory, and had radio equipment.

If it was still operational, she might be able to actually get a sit-rep to Reaper. She might be able to contact the nearest military facility, which was Robins’ Air Force Base—fifty miles away--because now Kaos didn’t think it was her imagination that the people in the vehicles screaming down the highway were fleeing. They were running from something and that was foreboding. The town needed to be locked down until the situation could be contained and there was absolutely nothing in place to do something like that here.

If Kaos could get them to the Police Department—a straight ten mile shot through downtown—they could bunk down there until back up could get here and Kaos could try to get a preliminary handle on things.  But to do it she was going to have to take them into town and had no idea what they would run into along the way. Risky but staying here was potential suicide if there were more monsters than just Dr. Menville out there.

“Hold your fire!” Kaos called loudly, returning to her mother’s house via the hole where the front door had been. She waited for a response before daring to stick her head inside and possibly get it blown off by her own sniper rifle. Wouldn’t that be ironic?

“Okay!” was the answer she got and Kaos slipped back inside the house. Maureen gave her a long look. “’Hold your fire’?” she said mockingly and rolled her eyes. Kaos refused to rise to the bait. She’d used military vernacular automatically. She wasn’t apologizing for it.

“Let’s go,” she said instead.

Maureen lowered the M40A5 and rested the butt on the floor like it was a walking stick. Kaos winced at it. “I’ve decided we’re not going anywhere. It’s dark now. We’ll hide in the basement until help gets here.”

Kaos blinked and gawked at her mother. She should have seen this coming. God forbid Maureen not be the one calling the shots. “You’ve decided?”

“Yes. I am not running away from my home.” Maureen’s chin was lifted and she was doing that thing she did where she peered down her nose at you despite being an inch shorter. The matriarch had spoken there would be no more argument.

“It’s not running away. It’s called ‘falling back to a more defensible position’,” Kaos said reasonably, fighting the surge of anger that had suddenly swelled up in her gut.

“Whatever,” Maureen said. “I’m still not leaving. It’s too dangerous.”

“Staying here is too dangerous! The front door is gone. There’s a monster missing its head, dead on your living room floor and its widow huddled in the corner babbling nonsense. The basement is a death trap, there’s only one way in and it’s underground. This one didn’t have a problem ripping a house door off like a piece of paper. We’d be sitting ducks. There’s no landline communication. No cell service. Law enforcement is unreachable. People are fleeing in droves. There is no help coming,” Kaos argued furious. “Not from here. Now move your ass.”

“Fuck you, you little bitch!” Her mother said enraged.

Her mother saw nothing at all wrong with calling Kira obscenities, she never had. But let Kira do it and watch the fireworks and the violence fly. Kaos shook her head, beginning to lose her grip on her temper, something she could not afford right now but it bubbled up and overflowed.

“My brother already did that; you’ll have to take a number.”

It was a dirty shot, one as low as the one her mother had taken earlier. Kaos knew it and she didn’t care. Her mother’s face went stark white then deep crimson and her hands clenched until they turned white on the sniper rifle, face full of rage and once again, self-pitying anguish. Maureen Canady’s face continued to contort and twist as she tried to decide how to react to that as Kaos moved to do the last thing she had to do before they got the hell out of here.

“You bitch,” her mother whimpered as Kaos moved toward the rubble where the cordless phone had been in search of a marker, tossing debris aside with her free hand. Her mother would have one despite the fact no one used pencils or pens, or markers anymore. Maureen Canady would catch up with the rest of the world precisely when it suited her and not before and to hell with the fact it was obsolete.

“I am your Mother. You don’t control me and you damn sure do not speak to me that way!”

Kaos found the marker and a roll of scotch tape. You’d find no digital holo-stickies in this house. The marker was the huge kind that damn nearly got you high just by taking the cap off even if you held your breath. “You’re right,” Kaos admitted flatly. “I don’t control you.  So, if you want to stay here, fine. You do that. But I’m going. I have to. The damn things are intelligent, Mom.” She nodded to the dead monster on the floor as she made her way back across the room to an expanse of wall with nothing hung on it. “It disabled both of their vehicles so they couldn’t leave. So you stay here and take pot shots at the next one with a .22.”

Maureen blanched again and clenched her jaw in renewed fury. “That’s just like you to run away and leave me here to die. Cold-hearted bitch.”

“You think that if you want to. I’m not leaving anyone. You want to stay. I have to go. Either get your ass in gear or don’t. I can’t make you.” Kira said with a coldness she didn’t feel as she uncapped the marker and began scrawling on the wall in large letters: _MCQUAIDS._

The code was a failsafe. All members of the RRTS were fitted with locator chips allowing them to be tracked wherever they went but this would guarantee they knew exactly where she’d gone without having to resort to tech. No sense risking that something would keep them from using her locator chip to find her.

“What the hell are you doing?” Maureen demanded now outraged her house was being defaced.

“Leaving a code only one person will be able to decode. I’m not risking that the damn things can read too,” Kaos said mildly, recapping the marker. “Look at it this way. Now you have an excuse to redecorate.”

She dug in her pocket for Dr. Menville’s wallet while Maureen seethed. Kaos pulled the ID out taping it by the shirt clip to the wall beneath the scrawled words and then tapped the wallet itself to the wall. It looked like an inept Spiderman had come to visit but it worked.

“I don’t even know you anymore!” her mother spat.

“You’ve never known me,” Kaos said then she looked back at her. “So, staying or going?”

Maureen fumed but she clutched the M40A5 closer to her and looked resigned. She was going but she was not going to say it. She would not admit ‘defeat’.

“We can’t leave the cats.”

“The cats will be safer loose, where they can hide.” Kaos just shook her head at the idea of a vehicle full of cats in the midst of this mess and held her hand out. “Your keys.”

Maureen began to resist and then she snarled that ugly deforming snarl and pulled her van keys out of her purse. She hurled them viciously at Kaos and Kaos caught them out of the air easily. That only served to piss Maureen off further but there was nothing she could do but glare daggers at her worthless daughter’s back as she taped the keys to the wall with everything else.

Then Kaos used the marker to draw arrows. One pointed from the ID and wallet in the general direction of the headless monster. Another pointed from the keys in the direction of the garage.

What Kaos was about to do would lead the RRTS directly to this location. And in the middle of nowhere they’d need transportation, there was no landing pad for a copter in town near the Police Department and Kaos wasn’t sure they could pull off landing on top of one of the buildings. If they could fine but failing that, the van could hold six comfortably. It would be crowded with seven people and their gear but it would have to do. She, her mother and Mrs. Menville would take Kaos’s rental car.

Her wall art complete, Kaos stepped back and slipped her watch off. Maureen looked at her with curiosity despite her anger as Kaos turned the ring of the watch face emblazoned with compass directions and latitude/longitude degrees.  It looked like a simple titanium watch with a compass function but it was also a dual frequency Cospas-Sarsat Emergency Beacon capable of sending a distress signal on both digital and radio frequencies. Even if the radio towers were not operational in this town…the beacon would still be heard due to its satellite capability.

From the face sprang a very small holoscreen with what looked like an old-fashioned DOS prompt and a miniscule alphanumeric keypad. With a few taps on the holoscreen Kaos had entered a single fifteen character message. _‘SND SGT ASH MURPHY’_. The function was meant to allow the user to enter a situation code if they had time but Kaos was using it to ensure Ash came with Reaper and the others. The code on the wall only she would understand.

“What is that?” Maureen asked looking at it incredulously, as though it were ridiculously extravagant.

“An emergency beacon.”

Kaos initiated the emergency beacon. The holoscreen dissipated and a tiny blue light began blinking rapidly beneath the face-glass indicating that it was transmitting. The time on the watch said 7 p.m. EST. All this crap had occurred in a short two hours span of time.

Kaos taped the watch to the wall next to everything else and turned away. It was only a matter of time now. Thirteen hours, give or take a couple, for the distress signal to be received, someone to decide what to do with it and the team to get off the ground. Silently, Kaos bid them to hurry the hell up.

“What do you think you are? James Bond?” Maureen asked snidely obviously finding the watch too audacious to take seriously.

Kaos scoffed as she retrieved her duffle and satchel slinging them over her shoulder along sing the UMP. “Hell, no. I’m an RRTS 6 Hellfighters Marine,” she said, pride in her team evident in her voice.

Her mother, expectedly, sneered at her for it but she slung the sniper rifle over her shoulder along with her purse and medicine bag.

“Get crazy pants and let’s go,” Kaos said turning to head for the garage as she pulled her rental car keys from an outside pocket of the rucksack. She took one final look around the room at everything, her eyes lingering longest on the headless monster on the floor. She grimaced, the horror of it all seeping through the barrier she had erected around it.

This town destroyed things. People. Dreams. Souls. It grabbed them with poison claws, broke them and sucked the life right out of them, refusing to let go until there was nothing left. Like the poor bastard on the floor. Like the boy lying on the cold ground across the highway. Like the woman huddled in a broken mess in the corner. Like Kira.

Maureen snorted inelegantly as she coaxed Mrs. Melvin off the floor with gentleness she’d never offered Kira. “What’s the matter? Your conscience getting to you? Or are you just admiring your handiwork?”

Kira winced, wounded by the remark and because her head chose that moment, as if it were mocking her, to remind her that she had a skull splitting headache and why she was in this God Forsaken place after ten years to begin with. Kira fought it down, repressed it as she always had and always would, right up to the end. She walked away from the scene.

“Move out.”

This place had always been Hell on Earth. It hadn’t needed to go and prove it. 


	3. Chapter One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Hellfighters get orders to rescue one of their own.

**CHAPTER ONE**

The klaxons created by the activation of an emergency beacon sounded throughout the base. Sergeant John Grimm groaned and slapped at the switch that shut off the sound. Quickly typing a few commands into his computer keyboard, he accessed information on the team’s latest assignment. A rescue mission in Georgia. “Wonderful,” he grunted as he read the report. Then he frowned when he noticed a particular name embedded in the file. “Unbelievable,” he muttered.

With a sigh, he got up and headed for the rec room where he knew he would find the rest of his team. As he descended the staircase, he could hear Lancer mouthing off again. God, he reminded him so much of Portman. Not in looks but definitely in attitude. He was as much a sleazeball as Portman ever was, maybe even more so.

At the bottom of the staircase, he stood silently for a moment, watching the interactions between Lancer and the target for his filth, Irish. He would intervene if he had to, but he knew Irish. He knew she could take care of herself. He had been the one to recruit her onto the team and he trained her himself. Hell, he was going to enjoy this. Reaper leaned against the handrail insolently and settled in to watch the fireworks.

Lancer advanced on Irish, crowding her, looming over her. “So, little girl, is there any truth to the rumors I been hearin’?”

She leaned back against the wall and glared at Lancer. “What rumors would that be?”

“I’ve been hearing things about you and the bossman,” he slurred, and the sound made Reaper’s skin crawl.

“What _things_?” she snapped.

Lancer reached out to run his hand along her face in a mockery of a sensual, intimate touch. “Things that you and the Sarge get up to in the dark.”

John was about to call out and put a stop to this when Irish’s hand shot out and grabbed his forearm, then twisting, she forced it down and backwards until he began to howl with pain. Then she kicked out and knocked his feet out from under him. Once he was down, she put her booted foot across his throat. John noticed with no little pride that she did _not_ put all her weight on that foot. She was just sending a message. Irish reached down and pulled the knife from her boot and ran the tip along his cheek, and the grin on her face was feral as hell. “Lancer, let’s get something straight _right now_. If you _ever_ slander Reaper again, I will personally slit your fucking throat.”

She stepped away from him and he got to his feet, but he couldn’t seem to keep his damned mouth shut. “See?” he said, glancing around at the others in the room. “Why’d she react like that if there wasn’t something goin’ on with them two at zero-dark-thirty when they think nobody’s lookin’?” Without a sound, she spun on the ball of her foot and with a flick of her wrist, her grip on her knife changed. Her arm raised and John realized if he didn’t do anything, she was going to drive it right through Lancer’s chest into his heart.

Catching the eyes of another of his men, and getting a barely perceptible nod in return, the two of them rushed her. Reaper grabbed her left arm, the one holding the knife, and the other man, also named John, grabbed her right. They had to drag her away from Lancer.

“Did you see what she did?!” Lancer yelled.

John Grimm gave him an icy stare. “Lancer, shut the fuck up, right now.”

Irish struggled to get loose of Reaper and the other John, surname and handle ID Kennex. “Damn it, John, let me go!”

Grimm nodded at Kennex, and after he disarmed Irish, he wrapped his arms around her body, immobilizing her. “Knock it off, Irish, damn it,” he whispered in her ear. To both of them he said, “We don’t have time for this shit. You two stow your crap and do it _now._ We have a mission.”

 _That_ certainly got everyone’s attention.

“What kind of mission?” Tyler Hicks asked.

“Rescue op,” Grimm replied, releasing his iron grip on Irish yet not releasing his hold on her. He noticed with a high degree of satisfaction that Kennex had positioned himself at the halfway point between Lancer and Irish, and Kennex’s best friend Dorian stood slightly to Kennex’s right, between the second-in-command and Lancer. There was no way Lancer was pulling any more bullshit tonight.

“Fall in, people. We’re heading to Georgia to rescue one of our own. Kaos’s beacon went off,” Reaper explained.

Irish twisted in his arms. “ _What?!_ ”

“Yeah. And I have orders that you _have_ to go on this mission. No ifs, ands or buts.” He lifted his head and glared at Lancer with a look that could melt titanium. Grimm turned her loose and walked her to her bunk with a hand in the small of her back. “Get your gear and let’s go suit up.” He stood there, arms crossed, waiting while she grabbed her things, then followed her as she took the stairs two at a time. He didn’t say another word. He didn’t need to. He knew Kennex would handle any more ruckus that came up.

Reaper waited until they were out of everyone’s earshot, even Dorian’s, though he knew the DRN wouldn’t repeat anything he heard. Still…he waited, until he and Irish were in the first locker room and the door was firmly closed behind them. “Ash? Honey, you okay?”

He could tell she was not. Not even close. He could see it in the way she threw down her bag and practically ripped it open. He saw quite clearly that her hands shook as she tried and failed several times to manage the Velcro closures on her solid black BDU. Reaper knew there was no way she’d manage the buttons. He stepped over to her. “Hey.” Taking her hands in his, he used gentle pressure to force her arms down to her sides. “Here, let me.”

She stood there, tears silently streaming down her face as he secured all her closures. He thanked the fact that they had women on the team and had to start using more than one locker room. He didn’t think either of them could handle any cracks about him being on his knees for her right now.

He stood up and used his thumbs to wipe away her tears. “Hey…it’ll be okay.”

“Fuck, John, it’s Kir.”

“I know,” he whispered, protocol be damned and took her in his arms. He leaned forward till his forehead touched hers. “I know. We’ll get her back.” He pressed a soft kiss to her forehead then turned away from her to strip and get into his own black clothing. Once they were both dressed and ready, he held out his hand. “You ready?”

“Yeah. Let’s go get my best friend back,” she said, and they walked out of the locker room and headed for the armory.

Catching up with the rest of the team, who were oddly silent, Irish and Reaper picked up their weapons. Each of them grabbed modified M1911 Browning pistols and wireless communications gear. Irish also grabbed a Mossberg 500 shotgun. Reaper tapped her on the shoulder. “Here,” he said, passing her the Ka-Bar he’d taken away from her earlier. One side of her mouth quirked up at him. “You sure that’s a good idea, boss?”

“I trust you, Ash,” he replied, and his use of her given name and not her handle ID told her he meant it.

She just shrugged and walked with Reaper to join Kennex and Dorian in boarding the Hellfighters’ heavily modified Cobra. They all climbed aboard, then set about pulling their G63 assault rifles from the slots along the chopper walls where they were kept. As each team member touched their rifle, a feminine voice identified them.

  _“RRTS Special Ops clearance verified. Handle ID: Lancer.”_

_“Handle ID: Junior.”_

_“Handle ID: Bullet.”_

_“Handle ID: Dorian.”_

_“RRTS Special Ops clearance verified. Handle ID: Irish.”_

_“RRTS Special Ops clearance verified. Handle ID: Kennex.”_

_“RRTS Special Ops clearance verified. Handle ID: Reaper.”_

After they were all settled in, Reaper called for everyone’s attention. “OK, people, listen up. Our mission, as I said before, is a rescue op. As you all know, Kaos went home on leave three weeks ago. One hour ago, her emergency beacon was activated. Command has given me orders to take the team in, locate and retrieve her. If any harm has come to Sergeant Canady, we have carte blanche to deal with the threat in whatever way necessary. However, keep in mind we are going to Kaos’s hometown, so there will be civilians all over the place. I do not want to see any of you going off half-cocked and causing injury to the civilian population. _Are we clear_?”

As one, the team replied, “Yes, sergeant!”

“Hey, Sarge, there’s something I don’t get though,” Lancer piped up.

From her seat next to Reaper, Irish groaned. Reaper laid his hand on her knee. “What, Lancer?”

“Why are we going after little miss tramp stamp anyway?” he groused. “With shit like that she doesn’t belong on this team.”

“What do you mean, Lancer?” Reaper asked, confusion covering his features.

“Tramp stamp?!” Irish yelled. “You fucker! You were in our locker room, weren’t you, you fucking asshole?” she screamed and dove for his throat. Reaper barely managed to get his arms around her waist, even with Kennex’s help keeping her from tearing into Lancer was a very near thing.

“Irish, what the fucking hell?” Reaper bellowed.

She spun in his arms for the second time in as many hours. “That motherfucking _bastard_ knows she has a tattoo, John,” she said.

“So?” Kennex spoke up. “I’ve got two of ‘em, so do you, and Reaper’s got one. What’s the big deal?”

“The _big deal_ , Staff Sergeant, is the location of her tattoo. _The small of her back, right at her tailbone._ If this sorry sonofabitch has seen it, then most likely my best friend was naked at the time. The only time either one of us is naked in the barracks is in our locker room, so _do the fucking math, John!_ ”

Lancer snarled, “Keep her crazy ass the fuck away from me, Reaper, or I swear to God…”

Kennex leaned in and wrapped his big hand around Lancer’s throat, just under his jaw. Applying a fair amount of pressure, he growled, “Don’t give me an excuse, Lancer. No one here will miss you.” Kennex jerked his hand away in such a manner that he still left a mark on the sleazeball’s throat.

Reaper sighed. Picking Irish up, he carried her back to their seats and plunked her down. “Sit,” he barked at her, although there wasn’t much bite to the sound. Turning around, but blocking Lancer’s view of Irish with his body, he announced to the team, “Listen up, people. This is going to be one long-ass trip, okay? We will be refueling at NAS Corpus Christi. Until then, find a way to keep yourselves occupied. Hell, take naps if you want, I don’t give a damn.” He nodded to Kennex, who grabbed Lancer’s arm and hauled him to the other end of the aircraft. Kennex glared at Lancer. “You are on notice, Lancer. Do not open your fucking mouth about Kaos or Irish again. Do not go near Irish, and once we find Kaos, you stay the fuck away from her too, or I will frag your sorry ass myself. Are we clear, Lance Corporal?”

Lancer just gave Kennex a hate-filled glare. Kennex shoved him up against the wall of the chopper, his arm across Lancer’s throat. Reaper stepped up to the two men. “Is there a problem here, gentlemen?”

“Nah, Reaps, just…getting a few things straight with Lance here, right?” Kennex smirked.

At a silent signal from Reaper, Dorian walked over and pulled his friend away from the troublemaking Lance Corporal.

“Just so you know,” Reaper said to Lancer as he walked away, “I heard what Kennex said to you, and I will not stop him. So you’d better not push him too far.”

Reaper sat back down beside Irish. “I think Kennex and I took care of him, babe,” he said to her softly.

“I swear, John, I’m gonna fucking kill that bastard,” she replied just as softly. She knew he could hear her above all the racket the chopper made and the chatter the others on the team were causing. Unlike the rest of the team, she knew about Reaper. That his sister had injected him with C24 several years ago when he was second-in-command of this very team, and dying from a gut shot after a horrific six hour firefight. And the results of that were that he became superhuman, which among other things, meant he had above average hearing. She’d even met Samantha at a barbecue at Reaper’s house once, when he’d had the team over, to try and get them to bond. That had been interesting.

She hadn’t needed to bond with Kaos, by virtue of the fact that they were best friends and had known each other since they were kids. Lancer’s perverted attitude had put her off from the moment she’d met him and he’d tried his damndest to come on to her. She’d gone into the house to make another pitcher of lemonade and he’d cornered her in the kitchen. Even if she hadn’t been completely repulsed by Lancer and his disgusting approach, by that time, she’d already lost her heart to Reaper. Of course the only one who had any inkling of it back then was Kaos. Now, some of the team thought they knew things. And Lancer thought he knew plenty, from some of the comments he’d been making lately. Irish mentally shrugged. She didn’t really give a damn what the rest of the team thought.

She felt movement to her right and looked over to see Bullet sitting next to her with a grin. “Want me to sedate you, Irish?”

“Sedate me?” she asked.

This caught the attention of Reaper who scowled at Bullet over her head. “What the hell for?”

“Just trying to help, baby girl,” he grinned.

She glared daggers at him. “If you really wanted to help, you’d drug Lancer’s sorry ass, not me. He’s the one with the fucking problem,” she growled at him.

“Get lost, Bullet,” Reaper snapped. Bullet got up to do just that, and Reaper called out to him. “Oh, and Bullet?”

“Yeah?”

“She’s not _your_ baby girl,” Reaper practically snarled, his green eyes snapping fire.

“John…” she said tiredly, putting a hand on his arm and trying to keep the peace.

“No,” he said, pulling her into his arms so she could rest more comfortably leaning against him. “Damn it, Ashlyn, you’re _mine_ ,” he growled in her ear. “And frankly I don’t give a flying fuck who knows.”

“We’ve been over this, John,” she whispered. “If the brass catches wind, they’ll pull me from the team.”

“Like hell,” John growled. “Get some rest, darlin’,” he whispered. “Long way to Corpus.”

“What about you?” she asked him.

“Somebody’s gotta watch your back,” he replied.

“That’s Kaos’s job,” she mumbled as he wrapped one arm around her, shooting the entire team a death glare.

At a nudge from Kennex, Dorian got up and sat on the other side of Reaper. With an insolent grin, Kennex stretched out with his long legs halfway into the aisle. Between him and Dorian, Lancer was not going to get the opportunity to mess with Irish and Reaper for at least the next eight hours until they landed at NAS Corpus Christi.


	4. Chapter Two

_They’d been at this for weeks, running drills, exercising, endless trips through the obstacle course and so many rounds of CQB Ashlyn thought she could do them in her sleep. And the weapons. She’d already been in the Marines a while so it wasn’t like she was unfamiliar with a variety of them but Reaper wanted to make certain she could fire and strip them in any situation, and some of the drills he’d run her through simulated that. He had her working through just about anything imaginable, and when her best friend had opened her big mouth and wondered ‘what would they do if…’ Ash had wanted to smack her because those ideas got added to her training regimen, on top of all the normal weapons work for special ops training including marksmanship and shooting, as well as combat medic certification and SERE (Survival Escape Resistance and Evasion) training._

_Now, she and Reaper were alone in the gym, and it was late at night. He’d asked her to stay as everyone else was leaving their usual group drill session, because he wanted to talk to her. “Okay,” she said, a little nervous at her team leader wanting to talk to her alone. She wasn’t afraid of him, or afraid of any sort of reprimand. She had just gotten a great performance review from the team’s second in command the week before. Her nervousness stemmed from the less than professional feelings she had somehow developed for Reaper. Ash figured Reaper somehow knew and she was going to get told off, let down or some crap._

_She watched him walk back over to her after closing the door behind the last of the team. Ash cocked her head, studying him intently. His demeanor was different now that everyone else was gone. He moved looser, as if he was more comfortable being around her alone.  “So, Irish…”_

_“Irish?” she asked, confused._

_He grinned. “Your Handle ID. You’re gonna need one.”_

_“And how did you come up with ‘Irish’?” she asked, unable to not grin back._

_“You are of Irish descent, are you not?”_

_“Yeah, how’d you know?”_

_“Your coloring, for one. Your temper, for another. Never mind your last name. You_ definitely _have Celtic blood in you,” he smirked._

_She nodded. “I can work with that. So, what did you need to see me for?”_

_Reaper ran a hand through his hair. Maybe this wasn’t such a great idea. “I…need to tell you something.”_

_“Ohh…kay…” she stuttered, nerves back on high alert._

_“It’s nothing bad, I promise, it’s just…I don’t know how you’ll take this,” he confessed._

_He gazed at her, and she thought he looked so lost. For just one moment she wanted to wrap her arms around him and tell him it would be okay. But Ash didn’t think she could do that. So she settled for as close as she dared. She reached out a hand and laid it on his arm. “John…what is it?”_

_Reaper looked down at her hand. He took it in his own and brought it to his lips. “Irish…” he whispered, the sound reverent._

_“John?”_

_He let go of her hand then cupped her head in his hand. “Ashlyn…” he murmured before capturing her mouth with his own._

_Almost not of her own volition, her hands came up to his face. His other arm wrapped around her body, and she had to stand on tiptoe when he deepened the kiss. Her arms slid around his neck and she nibbled on his bottom lip. Pulling away from him for a brief second, she looked into his eyes and the way she whispered his name took his breath away. “John…”_

_Before either of them could do anything else, the gym door opened with a creak, and Ash’s best friend Kira, another member of the team, hollered at her. “Hey, sis, you coming or what?” Her footsteps got closer, then they heard, “Oh_ shit _.” They heard the distinct squeak of rubber soles on the hardwood floor, then Kira muttering, “I saw nothing. I heard nothing. I was_ not _here.” A few seconds later, the gym door slammed shut with a bang._

_John and Ashlyn looked at each other. A smile creased his mouth. Ash clapped a hand over her own mouth but it didn’t help. Soon both of them were giggling so hard they fell to their knees. Ash had tears in her eyes. “Busted, huh?” John laughed. Ash shook her head. “Nah, Kaos won’t open her mouth, not if she knows what’s good for her.”_

_John got his breathing under control, which was damn hard for him to do given how pretty Ashlyn looked all flushed from his kisses and their shared laughter. “Kaos?” he asked, his brow wrinkling._

_“It’s her nickname. You know we’re best friends and have known each other since we were kids, right? One of our friends in high school gave it to her, ‘cause that girl is chaos incarnate, I swear,” Ash laughed._

_“Kaos,” John murmured, rising to his feet and helping her up. He didn’t let go of her once they were on their feet, though. “It fits her. That’s gonna be her handle ID.”_

_Ash made to leave, and couldn’t get far because John still had hold of her arms. “Where are you going?” he asked her._

_“Um, home?” she replied, trying to extricate herself from his hold, but he was having none of it._

_“Irish, go tell Kaos that we’re not done talking, and that I’ll take you home,” he instructed her, taking his sweet time in letting go of her. The tips of his fingers grazed her forearm, and he got a good look at the tattoo she had. A black rose with red thorns wrapped around it. He let his thumb stroke the ink as she walked away._

_Ashlyn ran outside, the cool night air doing absolutely_ nothing _for the fire skittering along her nerves. “Kir!” she called. “Yeah?” her best friend replied, hopping off the hood of her car. “What’s up?”_

_“Reaper told me to tell you he’ll take me home. Still needs to talk to me,” she said._

_Kira smirked at Ash. “I bet he will. Alright then, don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”_

_Ash rolled her eyes. “Yeah, what_ ever _.” Kira snickered as she got in the car. That was Ash’s classic defensive snappy comeback when she was embarrassed as hell. “That’s my girl,” Kira winked at her best friend and then started the car._

_Ash opened the gym door, grumbling under her breath. “Bite me.”_

_“_ What _did you just say?” John asked as he brought Ash her gear bag._

_Her blush deepened considerably. “Oh. Kira. I told her you said you’d take me home and her reply was classic Kaos. ‘I bet he will. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.’ Then when I tried to blow her off, she had the nerve to wink and say ‘that’s my girl’. See? I told you! Chaos incarnate. Her nickname is more than well deserved.”_

_They walked out of the gym and John locked up, then threw their bags in the trunk of his car. Then he walked around and opened the car door for Ash. He caught her arm just before she got in, though. “Ashlyn, you need to know something.”_

_“What is it?” she asked._

_“I’m very attracted to you,” he said softly, making her heart hammer in her chest._

_“I…I like you, too, John,” she whispered._

_“Good…I’m glad,” he said, then she got in the car and he closed the door. After he got in the driver’s seat, she grinned over at him. “So, does this mean we’re going steady now, boss?”_

_His eyebrow rose practically into his hairline. “Wait…I thought her nickname was Kaos, not yours.”_

_She laughed. “Oh hell, Reaper, you try growing up alongside that girl and see if some of the crazy doesn’t rub off on you.”_

_He shook his head as he started the car. “What have I gotten myself into?”_

***

**_Poker game/bullshit session at Reaper’s house…_ **

**_Reaper, Irish, Kaos, Kennex and Dorian are there_ **

**_Several hands in, drinks heavily imbibed and various and sundry insults flying…_ **

_Kennex noticed Dorian doing the disco face. “Don’t do that. Not here.”_

_“What, John?”_

_Kennex pointed to his face. “_ That _. The disco face. You’re scanning something. Stop it.”_

_“But John, you know I have to do your periodic medical check. By the way, you’re fine, except for the usual thing,” Dorian replied._

_Reaper raised an eyebrow at his cousin. “Usual thing?”_

_“It’s nothing, man…” Kennex tried to deflect but Dorian supplied the answer to the team leader’s question._

_“He’s backed up.”_

_“Backed up?” Kira asked. “What the hell does that mean?”_

_Kennex’s neck flushed an unbecoming red, and he growled at Dorian. “Damn it, Dorian, didn’t I tell you not to do that again?”_

_“Do what? Dorian, what did you do to him?” Reaper asked, as he got up and grabbed another beer._

_“I scanned his testicles, Gunnery Sergeant, and they are at full capacity. You also, are in perfect health, although your testicles are at partial capacity.”_

_Kennex glowered at Reaper. “Partial? What the hell’s that mean, cuz?”_

_“It means unlike you, Johnny boy,” Reaper grinned wickedly, slapping Kennex on the shoulder, “_ I _have a girlfriend.”_

_Irish got up and headed into the kitchen in time to hear that, and Kennex’s response. “Oh, go fuck yourself,_ Johnny boy _.”_

_Smirking, she grabbed a drink from the fridge and slid an arm around Reaper’s waist. “He doesn’t need to do that, Kennex.”_

_“Why’s that?” he asked, raising an eyebrow at her._

_“Because I do it for him,” she replied with a wink, stretching up on her toes to kiss Reaper._

_“It’s about damn time!” Kaos screeched from the den._

***

The dreamlike quality of her memories faded from her mind as she drifted to wakefulness. Irish slowly sat up and rubbed at the crick in her neck with a groan. “How long was I asleep?” she asked Dorian, who was sitting in the jumpseat across from her. The reason for his switching seats became rather apparent. Reaper too had fallen asleep, his long legs stretching into the aisle. His left arm was behind her and his right draped across her lap. She looked at him and smiled. Even in his sleep he was trying to protect her.

“About seven and a half hours,” Dorian replied.

When she’d sat up, Reaper had slid down until he was draped across her chest, half in her lap. Irish slid an arm under him, trying to make him more comfortable. She carded her other hand through his hair. The rest of the team was asleep, and even if they weren’t, right now she didn’t give a damn. Sleeping was the only time he got any peace lately, and by God she was going to let him have all the peace she could, and anyone who didn’t like it could kiss her ass.

“Hey, Dorian, do me a favor. Get a video of this, and send me a freeze frame of it later, will ya?” she asked, smiling down at her sleeping jarhead.

“Certainly, Ashlyn.” His left cheek lit up blue as he complied with her request.

“And Dorian? If you show this to Kennex, I swear I will have Rudy disassemble you and sell you for spare parts,” she threatened, but there was no heat to her words. Besides, Dorian knew Rudy would never do that. The team’s tech was too softhearted for that. He could hardly even be persuaded to shoot a gun, which is why he almost never came with them in the field.

“Sell who for spare parts?” Reaper asked, sitting up with a groan.

“Nothing,” Irish replied a little too quickly.

“Hmph,” Reaper grunted, not buying it for a second. “Somebody remind me to put in a request for comfier seats on this damn thing,” he grumbled to no one in particular.

Bullet laughed. “No chance in hell of that, bro.”

“Would they really do that?” Junior asked, eyes wide.

“Hell, kid, don’t you know command lives to make us miserable?” Kennex groused as he took woke, stood and stretched.

“On second thought, I should shut the hell up or the jump seats’ll be made out of wood the next time we sit down,” Reaper snickered.

“Bite your tongue,” Irish snapped at Reaper with a tired grin.

Kennex leaned in and with a wicked grin, whispered in her ear. “Thought you did that too, Ash.”

Ash just glared at him. “If you ever want the chance to use those backed up balls of yours, I suggest you move your ass, _Johnny boy_ ,” she hissed.

“Damn it, Reaper, what’d I tell you about making sure she stays caffeinated?” Kennex snapped. “You know how she is when she doesn’t have access to high grade octane.”

“What, and miss being able to watch her kick your ass?” Reaper grinned.

Irish shoved at Reaper and rolled her eyes. “Yeah, yeah, you just wanna watch me shake _my_ ass in these damn BDUs.”

“Fuck yeah, I do,” Reaper smirked, earning himself a smack across the back of the head from Irish, although given his superhuman abilities, she knew it didn’t hurt him. “OW!” he hollered, rubbing the spot she’d smacked, mostly for show to the rest of the team. “Oh, quit whining, you big baby, I didn’t hit you that hard,” she snarled, rising to her feet and stretching.

Irish grinned at Kennex. “Hell, you think _I’m_ bad on an empty tank of gas, you oughta see Kaos.” Her grin instantly faded at the mention of her best friend, whose rescue they were heading towards even as they joked with and teased one another.

Kennex put his hand on her shoulder in an empathetic gesture. “I have. We live in the same barracks, remember?” He shuddered. “Why do you think Reaper and I started making sure there’s a pot of coffee on around the clock? Self preservation, sweetheart,” he chuckled.

Reaper kicked at his ankle. “Get your own girl, damn it,” he hissed under his breath. “This one’s mine.”

Irish glanced over at Reaper. Reaper leaned in and kissed her cheek, whispering in her ear. “When we get your sister back, we should lock those two in a room together, I swear. Stubborn as mules, the both of them.”

She snorted. “Yeah, well, I hope you plan for us to be halfway around the world when they get out.”

Reaper rolled his eyes. “Hmph. I can take him.”

“Oh, _thanks_. Leave me to get my ass kicked. Some boyfriend you are,” she muttered crossly.

Reaper smiled. “You know I love you, babe.”

Shaking her head, she said, “Yeah, I do, which is why you don’t have several gaping holes in your ass already.”

“God, get us on the ground already, so we can get her mainlining some java. She’s a vicious little thing before she’s fully awake,” Kennex complained.

“Don’t look at me,” Reaper said. “I’m a grunt, not a pilot.”

Just then one of the pilots radioed back to the team. “ETA for refuel at Corpus is five minutes.”

“Roger that,” Reaper replied. “OK everyone, wake your asses up, and check your gear. We land for refuel in five.”

Lancer was the only one still asleep, so Bullet leaned over and shook him. “Lancer! Wake the fuck up, man. Gear check. We’re about to land.”

Lancer stirred and sat up, grumbling.

The team members all checked their gear bags, even though they had not been touched during the flight. Better to assure everything was in good working order now, than to get on the ground in Georgia and have things end up FUBAR. Irish figured Reaper would probably insist on another check before touchdown in Milledgeville as well. If he did, she didn’t mind. She knew his motivations behind the seemingly meticulous inspections, and not only understood, but supported his decision. And if anyone balked at the checks when they got to Georgia, she’d back him with a boot to the complainers asses if necessary.

The Cobra touched down at NAS Corpus Christi at approximately 0200 hours. The team left their gear onboard, and they all trudged tiredly into the BEQ, or bachelor enlisted quarters, after being given a ride to the other side of the base. Almost every single one of them made a beeline for the coffee machines scattered around the main room. Bullet made fun of Junior for not having any coffee. He’d grabbed a carton of chocolate milk. “What?” he groused defensively. “It’s good for your muscles.”

“Yeah, it is, kid,” Bullet replied with a grin around his steaming mug of black coffee. “ _After_ a workout, and we didn’t just come from the gym.”

Irish, Reaper and Kennex got coffee and danishes and sat down at a table with Dorian that happened to be near a bank of videocomms. “I’m going to try and give Kaos a call, see if I can find out what’s going on with her,” Irish told them as she reached for one of the holoscreens. Dialing her best friend’s cellular number, she got the stereotypical recorded message indicating Kaos’s cell was down. “ _We’re sorry, the customer you are calling cannot be reached at this time._ ” Then she tried Kaos’s mother’s number, and got a busy signal. It did not worry her too much initially, as she’d grown up in the same small town as Kaos, and knew sometimes cell service was spotty, and there could have been a perfectly legitimate reason for Kaos’s mother Maureen’s phone to be busy. She snorted, recalling the number of times Kaos had told her one of their cats had knocked the phone off the hook. Never mind the fact that the mayor of their little Podunk town had not allowed the city to convert to digital communications like most of the rest of the technologically civilized world.

“What?” Dorian asked, his blue eyes shining with concern.

“Oh. I just tried to call Kaos. Her cell is down but that’s not surprising given how crummy service is in our area. Her mother’s line is busy, but that isn’t surprising either. Probably one of the damn cats knocked the thing off the hook,” she said, and Kennex winced.

Irish noticed, and to deflect the small kernel of worry that had taken root, she pounced on him. “Whatsa matter, Kennex? Don’t you like cats?”

“No, he doesn’t. Kids either,” Dorian submitted matter-of-factly.

“That is _not_ true,” Kennex argued. “I never said I didn’t like kids. _You_ did.”

Reaper reached across the table and took Irish’s hand in his. The two of them tuned out the bickering between Kennex and Dorian as he lovingly stroked her hand with his fingers. “Try again in a little bit. Now drink up so you can quit ragging on my second-in-command,” he teased her.

She grinned evilly at him over the rim of her cup. “You do realize that means I’ll start in on you next?”

His green eyes smoldered at her as he sipped his own coffee. “Bring it on, baby.”

“Hell, I need a distraction,” Irish grumbled after she finished her cup. “It’s at least an hour before I should try calling Kaos or her mom again.”

Reaper downed his coffee and stood, holding out his hand. “Come on, let’s go take a walk.”

He slid his arm around her, and the hell with what anyone else thought. If anyone from this place said anything, he’d tell them a partial truth: that it was a comforting gesture because her best friend was currently MIA. He guided her out the door and onto the street directly in front, called Ocean Drive. Rather appropriate, given how close to the water the base was. Reaper could see a pier in the distance, so he led her toward it. They walked the first block or so in silence, just enjoying the momentary peace. Because they knew all too soon, their lives were going to be filled with anything but peace and silence.

As they crossed the intersection of Ocean Drive and 9th Street, Irish turned to Reaper. “John, can I tell you something?”

He stopped walking and faced her, taking both of her hands. “Of course you can. Always.”

“I’m scared.” Her voice was barely a whisper.

Reaper pulled her gently into his arms. “I know…tell you the truth, so am I, and although he won’t admit it, my cousin is too.”

She looked up at him. “If you tell me everything will be okay, I swear, I’ll punch you in the face.”

He grinned at her. “Wouldn’t dream of it, darlin’. I know how hard you can hit when you put your mind to it. Now, let’s go find the rec center. I’m in the mood for some pinball. How about you?”

She gawked at him. “Pinball? Reaper, you’re out of your mind!”

Still grinning, he tugged her along. “Best two out of three? Loser buys the beer.”

“I don’t even drink beer, you idiot!” She laughed at him. Ash really truly loved John at that moment. She knew he had to be as worried about Kira as she was, and yet here he was being silly, trying to lift her spirits.

They found the rec center and inside was surprisingly, a cooler full of those old fashioned style bottles of Coke. Reaper bought them some, then they picked a pinball machine in a back corner. Irish hadn’t played pinball in years and as such, wasn’t very good at it, but that wasn’t really the point. It didn’t matter who won or lost. What mattered was that Irish was having a moment or two of fun, a distraction from her worry about Kaos, while she still could. For once the Cobra was refueled and they were off again on the second and final leg of the trip, there would be no distractions. Soon enough there would be six and a half hours for her to ruminate. Reaper wanted to give her this respite as long as he could. After an hour, though, Irish called it quits. “I’m gonna get carpal tunnel, damn it,” she grinned at him.

“Don’t do that,” he mock growled. “Can’t have you dropping your gear.”

She made a face at him as they left the rec center and got back in their borrowed vehicle. “So that’s all you want me around for, huh?”

He looked over at her as he started the car. “Ashlyn, don’t you know you’re the only thing that keeps me sane?”

She reached over and took his hand in hers. “Ditto, tough guy.” They held hands the entire way back across the base. Arriving back at the BEQ, they headed back inside, Irish to a spot off by herself where she pulled her cell phone from her pocket and attempted a call, and Reaper to grab them more coffee. By the time he brought her a cup, she had slammed her hand against the wall in angry frustration.

“What is it?” he asked, passing her the cup he’d gotten.

“Still no answer at Kira’s mom’s. And I let it ring a lot too. By now, Maureen would’ve answered and blistered my ear for waking her up.” She took a sip of the coffee then hit the speed dial for Kaos’s number. Again, she got the same thing as before. “ _We’re sorry, the customer you are calling cannot be reached at this time._ ” She gave Reaper a frightened look. “Okay…I think I’m more than scared now. And I’ve known that girl all my life, John. Something’s not right here. We need to move. _Now_.”

He took her by the arm, their coffee forgotten, and went to collect the rest of the team. They found them near the door of the building, Kennex looking smug and Lancer looking like he’d been run over by a steamroller. His face was swollen and bruised, he had the beginnings of a black eye, and a bloody and possibly broken nose. Reaper, Irish and Kennex exchanged silent looks. Neither Reaper nor Irish needed to ask what had happened. They knew. Lancer had said or done something, and as promised, Kennex had beaten the hell out of him. Well, technically, Kennex had promised to frag Lancer, which meant he’d kill him, but they needed all the manpower they had to find out what the hell was going on. But you could be damn sure Kennex would give Reaper the full story once they got back to Headquarters.

“We have a disturbing development, team. Irish cannot raise Kaos or her mother by phone,” Reaper announced.

“Yeah, and despite the fact that Milledgeville is about as low-tech as they come, I should’ve gotten one of them by now,” Irish said.

“So let’s go check on our bird and see what we can do about getting in the air, shall we?” Reaper said as he led them outside. Once more borrowing vehicles, they headed back to the tarmac where their Cobra waited. A young man in a long sleeved purple shirt and camouflage pants came jogging over. “She’s all fueled and ready for you, Gunny.”

Reaper grinned. “Thanks, Petty Officer.”

“You heard him, folks. Let’s go,” Reaper said to the team. He didn’t have to say it twice. The Hellfighters were more than happy to be on their way.

**Author's Note:**

> Reference pix for characters, weapons, tattoos and other pertinent info may be found here:
> 
> http://www.pinterest.com/featherbelle76/long-night-in-hell-ref-pix/
> 
> Playlist for the entire work - including as yet to be written chapters - may be found here: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNHJPayEqDx0G3OKcRcqUkuC2sV1qxYLn


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